Human Process Performance

Organizations are based on both human and IT supported activities and processes that aim to achieve a certain strategic objective. These activities need to be organized in such a way that organizations are most profitable and also reach certain ecological goals within a given environment. Performing some activities by human workers can be one possibility to reach this objective.

Challenges

Determining activities in a workflow which may be replaced by human activities in order to improve the ecological footprint of a certain business process.

Solution

Replace certain activities which are enacted by machines that pollute the environment with human performed activities to obtain a greener business process.

Results

By replacing certain activities of a workflow so that they are enacted by humans, the environmental impact of a business process may be reduced.

Example

Consider an organization that manufactures specialized metal parts for engineering. The parts are produced in small batch series. Instead of using a high-tech laser-scanning machine which scans each part for quality assurance, an employee checks the corresponding part. This saves the organization costs (at least to some extend) and decreases the environmental impact which is created through the manufacturing and operation of such a specialized machine.

Variations

Single activities must not be executed by humans in total. They can also be semi-automated or split into an automated and a manual part to better (i.e. more efficiently) support human process performance.

Relations to other Patterns

The green automatization pattern may be considered as the opposite of the Human Process Performance pattern. Also, the use eco-friendly resources pattern may be considered because changing an activity to be enacted automatically may be considered the same as using other resources to enact a certain task.