Determine whether activities are related to the same type of case and, if necessary, distinguish new business processes
Reijers, H., & Liman Mansar, S. (2005). Best practices in business process redesign: an overview and qualitative evaluation of successful redesign heuristics. Omega, 33(4)
One should be cautious of parts of business processes that are not specific for the business process they are part of. Ignoring this phenomenon may result in a less effective management of such a sub-process and a lower efficiency. Applying this heuristic may result in faster processing times and less cost.
Especially Berg and Pottjewijd (1997) convincingly warn for parts of business processes that are not specific for the business process they are part of. Ignoring this phenomenon may result in a less effective management of this "subflow" and a lower efficiency.
Note that this heuristic is in some sense similar to the triage concept. The main interpretation of the triage concept can be seen as a translation of the case type pattern on a activity level.
Applying this best practice may yield faster processing times and less cost. Also, distinguishing common subflows of many different flows may yield effciency gains. Yet, it may also result in more coordination problems between the business process (quality) and less possibilities for rearranging the business process as a whole (flexibility).
Foundational free Patterns
Assign a responsible individual for handling each case type
Establish a case-based mindset
Remove batch-processing and periodic activities from your business process
If capacity is insufficient, consider increasing the available number of resources
Order knock-outs by least effort and highest termination probability first.
Consider whether activities may be executed in parallel
Start implementing actions that can offset or counterbalance the environmental effects generated by business processes that cannot be changed.
Consider whether it is eco-friendly to let humans work over machines
Reassign tasks along the organisational hierarchy
Distribute tasks by interdepartmental interactions to enable or restrict involvement
Consider the division of a general activity into two or more alternative activities
Let workers perform as many steps as possible for single cases
Establish a case-based mindset
Remove batch-processing and periodic activities from your business process