Simulation-Based Decision Support for the Reduction of the Energy Consumption of Complex Business Processes

With this paper we introduce a simulation approach to Green Business Process Management (Green BPM). While objectives for business processes are traditionally economic (e.g. Costs or cycle time), our approach focuses on the energy consumption and the carbon footprint of complex business processes. We present an approach for applying Business Process Simulation (BPS) techniques to the subject, using established simulation software. After developing the simulation concept for reducing the energy demand of complex business process execution instances, we demonstrate its practical relevance by applying the simulation to a real-world business process of a German energy supplier. With the reduction of the energy consumption by 28% we could not only demonstrate that BPS is capable of optimizing the energy consumption of business processes. BPS also supports the analysis of path complexities of business process models and can therefore serve as preparation for effective decision-making in an ecological context.