Quality and service excellence is the cornerstone of the University of Wollongong
Library commitment to staff and students. Located throughout NSW and the world,
libraries and access centres support over 20,000 students and staff, providing access to
half a million books, over 106,955 journal titles, 610 databases (online collections of
journal articles) and 246,450+ e-books.
The handling of delays for delivering books and journals back to the library today is
very inefficient. The existing IT system is able to automatically send a reminder to the
customer about the delay, but the handling of the delay is done purely manually by the
librarians if the customer does not return the book or journal. The management of the
Library has decided that the delay process should be managed by a business process
management system. A business consultant interviewed a number of librarians about
how they handle delays. The interviews result in a heterogeneous view of the practice
of handling delays. The (hypothetical) scenario of handling a delay can be
summarised as:
A delay can be recognised automatically by the existing library management system
in the morning of the next day after the due date. An email will be sent to the customer
automatically, requesting him/her to return or renew the book. If the book has not
been returned a week later, a librarian will be notified by email. The librarian looks
up the delayed customer in the IT system. If there is a phone number registered, she
tries to call him by phone, else she writes a letter telling about the delay, that he
already has received one reminder and that he will be charged a fee for the delay. If
the book has not been returned a week later, the librarian will send another letter to
the delayed customer informing him that the case will be escalated if the book is not
returned in the next 7 days. In about 60% of the cases, the customer in question
returns the book any time during this period. In such cases, the library system
calculates the late return penalty of $0.5 per day and attaches the fee to the
customer’s account. After that, the process is aborted. In about 30% of the cases, the
customer in question reports that the book has been damaged or lost any time during
this period. In such cases, the library system checks the cost of book, and attach this
fee to the customer’s account. After that, the process is aborted. In other 10% cases,
the librarian escalates the case to her manager, who takes over.
If the delayed customer is a student, the manager contacts the academic registry
department to suspend the student account. If the delayed customer is a staff member,
the manager contacts the Personnel unit to suspend the staff payroll. After that, the
manager contacts the bad payment register through a web browser to register the
customer as a bad payer. After that, the manager attaches a fee payable to the
customer’s account and request the customer to pay. The fee is calculated as the cost
of the book plus the late return penalty and the administrative fee. The case will be
closed by the manager when the charged amount is paid in full. When the case is
ISIT332 Business Process Management
closed, the manager will notify the academic registry department or the personnel
unit to lift the suspension. Occasionally, the customer might return the book and also
pay the fee in full. In this case, the cost of the book will be refunded. In some other
cases, the customer returns the book without paying the fee. The case remains open
but the amount the customer owes will be changed. Sixty days after the delay is first
identified, if the case is still open, the manager change the status of the case to
“forced close” and contacts a debt collection agency by phone to collect any
outstanding fee.
You are employed as an IT architect for the library. You are responsible for modelling
the above delay handling business process using BPMN. You will need to identify
events, activities and decision points, and show the complete library private process
and its interactions with external entities. Document your business process diagram
using Bizagi BPMN modeller. Where the description is not clear, you can make your
own assumptions. You will need to draft a supporting document to explain your
assumption and submit it together with your process model.