Implications of the Exact Time Use for the Simulation of Business Processes’ Costs with the TDABC Approach

Business process simulations provide a flexible approach to analyze business processes through simulation experiments using various ‘what if’ questions. Many business process simulation tools provide means for assessment of quality and efficiency of business processes; however, the possibilities of cost dimension simulation are being neglected. The focus of this research is on the use of exact times of business process activities for simulations of organizational costs and thus on cost simulations at the operational level. Furthermore, this research addresses the implications of exact times used on simulations of organizations’ costs. Finally, we address the possibilities of contemporary business process simulation tools for the simulation of organization costs using exact activity times. To do this, we postulated two research questions. To answer these research questions, we first analyze the real-life event log that represents the loan application process and the estimated probability distributions of the duration of the process activities based on the exact times recorded in the log. Secondly, we analyzed capabilities provided by selected business process simulation tools towards simulation of business processes’ cost with TDABC approach.