Page 306 -

288 11 Analyzing “Lasagna Processes”

need to market their products and manage long-term relationships with their cus-
tomers (CRM). Both Lasagna processes and Spaghetti processes can be found
in this functional area. The handling of sales activities can be very structured
whereas marketing-related activities may be rather unstructured.
• Logistics is concerned with the movements of products and materials, e.g., ship-
ping the product to the customer and managing the storage space. Most processes
in logistics are Lasagna processes.
• The functional area Finance/accounting deals with all financial aspects of an or-
ganization, e.g., billing customers, checking invoices, financial reporting, and au-
diting. Processes in this functional area are also typically Lasagna processes.
• Resource management is the functional area that makes sure there are sufficient
resources to perform all other functions. HRM (Human Resource Management) is
concerned with human resources and similar functions exist for machines, build-
ings, etc. Both Lasagna processes and Spaghetti processes can be found in this
functional area, e.g., the handling of job applications may be very structured
whereas the handling of a problematic employee may be rather ad-hoc.
• The functional area Service deals with all activities after the product has been
shipped and paid for, e.g., activities related to product support, maintenance, re-
pairing defective products, and help-desk operations. Service related processes
are typically Spaghetti-like. Customers will use products in many different ways
and repair processes are rather unpredictable for most products, e.g., no faults
are found in the product returned by the customer or the wrong component is
replaced and the product still malfunctions intermittently.
The characterization of the different functional areas in terms of Lasagna processes
and Spaghetti processes is only intended as an indication. Both types of processes
can be found in all of the functional areas. However, as shown in Fig. 11.7,itis
possible to pinpoint typical functional areas for both types. For example, in most
organizations product development processes are rather unstructured compared to
production processes. This implies that most of the techniques presented in this
book can be applied to production processes. However, for product development
∗
processes it is unlikely that all stages of the L life-cycle model (Fig. 11.6) can be
executed. (Stages 3 and 4 are typically not possible for Spaghetti-like processes.)

11.4.2 Process Mining Opportunities per Sector

After contemplating on the presence of Lasagna and Spaghetti processes in the func-
tional areas in one organization (Fig. 11.7), we now look at different sectors and
industries.
The primary sector of the economy is concerned with transforming natural re-
sources into primary products (e.g., agriculture, agribusiness, fishing, forestry and
all mining and quarrying industries). Information technology tends to play a minor
role in these industries. Hence, the application potential of process mining is lim-
ited. Of course there are exceptions. Consider for instance the tracking and tracing