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Production planning business process modelling using UML class diagram

Conference Paper · March 2018

DOI: 10.1109/INFOTEH.2018.8345535

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 17th International Symposium INFOTEH-JAHORINA, 21-23 March 2018

Production Planning Business Process Modelling

Using UML Class Diagram
Dusanka Dakic, Darko Stefanovic, Teodora Lolic, Srdjan Sladojevic, Andras Anderla
Department of industrial engineering and engineering management
Faculty of Technical Sciences, University of Novi Sad
Novi Sad, Republic of Serbia
dakic.dusanka@uns.ac.rs, darkoste@uns.ac.rs, teodora.lolic@uns.ac.rs, sladojevic@uns.ac.rs, andras@uns.ac.rs

Abstract — Business processes present a core of business
organizations from the occurrence of process view on the
organization. With the advent of globalization and frequent
economic changes, there is an increased level of complexity of
enterprise-environment relations, and consequently a raising
need for managing these processes. Business process modelling is
a necessity and prerequisite for business process management
and therefore many business process technices and languages
were developed. In the past five decades, business processes are
managed through automated systems and these business process
modelling techniques have been used for the purpose of
documentation of information systems requirements and needs.
This paper presents one solution for modelling of production
planning business process in a mid-sized organization in Serbia,
utilizing UML class diagram.
Key words – business process; business process modelling;
production planning process; UML diagrams;
I. INTRODUCTION
Business process can be defined as a set of activities inside an
organization, with description of their logical order and
dependencies, whose objective is to produce a desired result
[1]. In this paper, focus will be set on production systems,
whose basic function in general is to meet the dynamic needs
of the market and surroundings and whose balance exist only
if the relationship between supply and demand, environmental
requirements and state of the elements in production system
remain unaltered. Therefore, any change in the system
environment and in the system itself disturbs the state of
equilibrium, that is, acts on the system as a disorder.
Accordingly, the disruptive effects are the main source of
constant need for management in the system. Production
management in a production system is not possible without
relevant, quality, timely and reliable information about the
system state and behaviour. Therefore, all business processes
must be managed.
Business process management is a trend that occured in the
1920’s and is known as first business process management
wave, where they were implicitly defined as work procedures,
and were not automated. Automation of business processes
occurs with second business process management wave during
1990’s, which was enabled through ERP systems [2].
Today, business process management is a broad discipline that
makes remarkable progress in areas such as business process
mining (automatic discovery of process models from raw
event data produced by common information systems found in
organizations), systematic identification of typical process
behaviors based on information provided by the Workflow
Patterns initiative, syntactic verification of complex business
process models before implementing them through IT and
automatic execution of business process model [3].
Computing and communication innovations are still leading
actuators of change in organizational business processes and
contribute to motivation for business process modelling.
Business processes are modelled with an aim to provide a
comprehensive understanding of a process and a base for
analysis. An organization can be easily analysed and
integrated based solely on correctly modelled business
processes [1].
Motivation for business process modelling does not have to be
tightly connected to computer science, altough main reason for
business process modelling is documentation of information
systems development needs and requirements. There is an
increased interest in software process modelling in an
organizational context, as it has been perceived that true cost
benefits occur when software processes are aligned with
organizational processes [4]. With the need for business
process management, modelling and automation, business
process modelling distinguishs itself as field in system
egineering, with numerous business process modelling
techniques and languages [5].
Crucial business process in a production system is production
management process. Production control process consist of
several subprocesses: Production Planning, Engineering
Decision Making and Production Control. The focus of this
paper will be automation of production planning process in an
organization in Serbia. Production planning process consists
of creation of numerous time and resource planns based on
system requirements, systems objectives and goals placed
before the system.
This paper will discuss the importance of business process
modelling, it’s techniques and languages and in which way

978-1-5386-4907-7/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE

 17th International Symposium INFOTEH-JAHORINA, 21-23 March 2018
can they be utilised for software development. The final
contribution will be a production planning UML class
diagram, as model domain for production planning process
and background for process automation in an organization in
Serbia.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2
focuses on definition of business process and most common
business process modelling technices and languages used.
Then it describes more closely object oriented methods for
business process modelling, as they are used in this paper.
Section 3 describes what entire production planning process
and it’s integral parts should represent in an organization.
Section 4 describes methodology used for development of
paper’s final result – UML class diagram for production
planning process. Section 5 presents these results (developed
UML class diagram) and section 6 offers some final thoughts
on the subject and possible future work.
II. BUSINESS PROCESSES
A. Definition
Business processes are a set of procedures for conversion of
available input sizes (matter, energy and information) into
output sizes (product or service, new information and, in some
cases, a new form of energy). [6] According to the Quality
Management System, the process is "a set of interconnected or
interacting activities that convert the input elements into the
output elements" [7].
Business processes were not in focus until the 1980s, when a
process view of the organization appeared. The organization is
viewed as a set of business processes, a process system, where
processes have interaction and interdependence, with a
common goal of creating values. A process view of the
organization requires the organization to:
• Identify all business processes and apply
them consistently throughout the organization;
• Determine the order and interaction of these
processes;
• Identify the criteria and methods needed for effective
managing these processes;
• Ensure the availability of resources and information
necessary to support the implementation and
monitoring of these processes;
• Monitor, measure and analyze processes and
implement measures necessary to achieve the planned
results and continually improve these processes [7].
The literature outlines three key reasons for the emergence of
a process-oriented organization: quality control, more efficient
management and development of information technologies.
B. Business process modelling
The motive for business process modeling does not have to be
related to computer science, but to a large extent, business
processes are modeled to document the needs and
requirements of the information system development. With the
established need for business process management and,
therefore, for their modeling, modeling of business processes
is distinguished as a part of system engineering, where
business processes are represented through models. A number
of techniques and models of business process modeling are
also being developed, whilst choosing a modelling language
becomes essential.
There are many business process modelling techniques and
languages and several authors essayed a research with the aim
to classify them. According to Van Der Aalst [5], modelling
languages can be divided into three classes: formal languages,
conceptual languages and execution languages, where formal
languages include Turing machines, Petri nets, temporal logic
and process algebra, conceptual languages include BPMN
(Business Process Modelling Notation), EPCs (Event-Driven
Process Chains) and UML diagrams (Unified Modelling
Language), whilst execution languages include languages such
as BPEL (Business Process Execution Language).
Aguilar-Saven and Ruth Sara [1] determined the following
main process modelling techniques: Flow chart technique,
Data flow diagrams—Yourdon’s technique, Role activity
diagrams—RAD, Role interaction diagrams—RID, Gantt
Chart, Integrated Definition for Function Modelling IDEF,
Coloured Petri-net—CPN, Object-oriented methods and
Workflow technique.
Particulary interesting for this paper are object-oriented
methods. They are based on three concepts: objects (real
world entities), their state and their behaviour. The object’s
state is represents by attributes, where a set of object with
similair attributes and/or relationships to other object are
called a class. Most commonly used modelling language that
uses this concepts to build models is Unified Modelling
Language - UML [1]. UML is a language for specifying,
visualizing, constructing and documenting the artefacts of
software systems, as well as for business modelling and other
non-software systems. The UML covers conceptual things,
such as business processes and system functions, as well as
concrete things, such as programming-language classes,
database schemas, and reusable software components [1].
UML is particularly effective for creating useful design
models of software systems in a form suitable for translation
into some form of executional language, such as program
code. However, UML also has applicability in a number of
other scenarios such as business process modelling [4].
UML offers following modelling diagrams: Class diagram,
Object diagram, Statechart diagram, Activity diagram,
Collaboration diagram, Use-case diagram, Component
diagram and Deployment diagram.
 17th International Symposium INFOTEH-JAHORINA, 21-23 March 2018
III. PRODUCTION PLANNING PROCESS
In this section prouction planning will be adressed as a crucial
process in a manufacturing company. Production planning has
several subprocesses and every subprocess has numerous
activities that have to be realized and production documents
that are generated as a results of these activities. The process
of production planning and control takes place within
production management function and the production itself.
Figure 1. presents integral parts of production planning –
Operational Planning, Manufacturing Resource Planning,
Shop Floor Order Setup and Production Process Simulation
[8].
Figure 1. Production Planning
Integral part of production planning that represents the
beginning of all production activities is operational planning.
The goal of operational planning is to formalize the
relationship between the production system and its business
environment. Namely, operational planning is based on
research, preparation and processing of the information
gathered from the market, which determines the qualified
requirements for products from the production program. The
result of operational planning is creation of an initial, master
and modified operational plan of production.
The following integral part of production planning is
Manufacturing Resource Planning - MRP II. Based on
informational basis given by the operational plan and on
norms given by the technological procedures, manufacturing
resource planning can be realised. Resources that need to be
planned are the following: material resources (product
components/elements, basic, auxiliary and consumable
materials), time as a resource (time needed to perform
production activities), technological resources (machines,
tools and equipment), energy resources, human resources in
production and financial resources needed for execution of
production process. Result of manufacturing resource planning
should be balance score card of all previously mentioned
manufacturing resources. Balance score card or material
requirements plans are always formed based on exact basics
and planned values.
Shop floor order setup’s initial activity is creation of work
order (where each product can not be manufactured without an
work order), which is a basic enterpise document that enables
planning, monitoring and control of production process.
Derivatives of the work order are an identity card, a deadline
card and a receipt/handover card. Their purpose is monitoring
the product and providing the conditions for production
monitoring, controlling, time cost effectivness, meeting the
deadlines and distributing the costs and profits by profit
centers in the system. Work orders are based on the production
operational plan and are formed for each product from the
operational plan separately. By product, several different
subjects of manufacturing can be considered, such as elements
of the product, materials and finished goods. Based on these
subjects of manufacturing, work orders can be divided into
assembly work orders, which reffer to finished goods,
processing work orders, which reffers to elements that have to
be manufactured, and preparation work orders, which reffer to
preparation of the material later used in manufacturing.
Each work order from production operational plan is
accompanied by a technological process, as well as the model
of the subject of manufacturing to which the work order
reffers. Another important production order document,
considering shop floor order setup, is a worksheet document.
Worksheet is also a work order, but it refers to the workplace,
and not the product itself. For this reason, the number of
worksheets corresponds to the number of operations of
technological process necessary to produce a particular subject
of work. Another production order that is related to the
worksheet is a requisition document. Requisition documents
carry information about the amount of manufacturing
resources taken from the warehouse, actual consumption of
those resources and amount of unused resources returned to
the warehouse after execution of operations that are related to
concrete worksheet.
Previously mentioned activities of production planning as a
result, in fact, provide certain information carriers -
documents. Documents that come out as a result of operational
planning and manufacturing resources planning are called
planning documents. Planning documents in production are an
production operational plan, a manufacturing resource plan
and a production timetable.
Documents generated during the shop floor order setup are
called executive documents. A group of executive documents
are documents with information content whose purpose is the
initialization of production processes. These are documents
such as work orders, worksheets and requisitions.
From the group of executive documents, control documents
can be extracted as a sub-group. Control documents are
introduced into the system with the aim of providing adequate
 17th International Symposium INFOTEH-JAHORINA, 21-23 March 2018
information contents for following work items and production
flows in production processes. For this purpose, the
aforementioned derivatives of the work order are used, which
are: identification card, the main purpose of which is to
provide the possibility of monitoring and recognizing every
object of races during its production, completely independent
of its path and current position in material flows; Deadline
Map - A document whose purpose is to provide the possibility
of controlling the realization of the planned deadlines for
completing certain stages of production of the subject of work;
A receipt / handover card - a document whose purpose is to
provide the possibility of recording the entry of a subject into
any unit of organization and the exit of that subject from the
organizational unit.
IV. METHODOLOGY
In order to create a base and gather relevant information for
production planning process automation, i.e. development of
production planning software, the production planning process
had to be in some way modelled. In section 2, several different
techniques and languages for business process modelling were
mentioned, from which object-oriented methods were singled
out as relevant for this paper.
Object-oriented information systems analysis and design has
two basic phases: Object-oriented analysis (OOA) and Object-
oriented design (OOD) [8]. Main focus of object-oriented
analysis is identification of the system and problem domain,
which in this case are company’s production system, integral
parts of this system and information requirements.
For the purpose of completing an object-oriented system
analysis (whose outcome will be consistent with the initial
setting of the task), and according to UML standards, it was
necessary at the very least to perform the following
methodological steps:
• Defining and analyzing initial use case diagram for
the production planning system,
• Based on the analysis of system’s use cases,
extract classes that will be implemented in a later
developed information system,
• Defining UML class diagram based on extracted
classes.
Use-case diagram illustrates the relationships between use-
cases i.e. captures the functional requirements of a system.
They describe the typical interactions between the users of a
system and the system itself, providing a narrative of how the
system is used. Each use-case, typically defined in plain text,
describes a part of the total system functionality [10].
UML class diagrams model the information on the domain of
interest, in this case the production planning process, in terms
of objects organized in classes and relationships between
them. UML class diagrams allow modelling, the static
structure of an application domain, in terms of concepts and
relations between them and give a conceptual perspective on
the production planning system [10], [11].
For the purposes of this paper, the final result of the object-
oriented software development analysis will be shown - that
is, the selected key system abstractions and the UML class
diagram that represents the production system.
V. RESULTS
In this section initial use-case diagram and class diagram,
developed for the production company will be presented. This
company is a mid-sized, production company that
manufactures brass plumbing fittings. With it’s 50 employees,
the company manufactures around 3.000.000 pieces of
finished goods annually. The production planning strategy of
the company is make-to-order, which means that they do not
generate supplies of finished goods. Instead, production
planning is based on customer sales orders.
After observations and analysis of production planning
process and activities and actors included in the process, three
key use-cases can be singled out as of great significance and
included in to initial use-case diagram. Initial use-case
diagram presents operational planning use-case,
manufacturing resource planning use case and shop floor order
setup use-case and relationships between them. Furthermore, it
shows actors that participate in the realization of these use-
cases. Initial use-case diagram is shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2. Designed production planning use case diagram
These initially observed use-cases can be dissolved into
simpler use-cases that could present how production planning
process functions in more concise and detailed manner. Based
on these detailed use-case diagrams, key system abstractions
can be extracted in a model domain i.e. UML class diagram.
Production planning UML class diagram is presented in
Figure 3. Class diagram shows identified classes, relationships
between them and associated attributes. For the purpose of this
paper, class diagram is modelled as a conceptual model and
therefore does not show class methods or access level
modifiers for the class attributes.
17th International Symposium INFOTEH-JAHORINA, 21-23 March 2018

Figure 3. UML class diagram for production planning

 17th International Symposium INFOTEH-JAHORINA, 21-23 March 2018
Identified classes included in the diagram presented in Figure
3. are:
 Class Product, further generalized into classes
Element, Material or FinishedGoods;
 Class ProductModel, as every product instance must
have suitable product model. Product can be
modelled through BillofMaterials class and/or
WorkingDrawing class;
 Class ProductionPlan that includes
ManufacturingResourcePlan and
OperationalPlan. ManufacturingResourcePlan
refers to plans made for manufacturing resources,
modelled by ManufacturingResources class, and
they include ToolandEquipment, Machinery,
Employee and Energy classes;
 Each manufacturing resource is located in a
warehouse, therefore there is a Warehouse class that
relates to GoodsReceipt and OutboundDelivery
classes. Goods receipt is a document that shows
which resources are delivered to a certain warehouse,
and form which supplier. Outbound delivery
document shows which products are shipped to
which buyer. Therefore, there are Supplier and
Buyer classes;
 Production Order class relates to products and is
further generalized in WorkOrder, WorkSheet and
Requisition classes. Work orders are based on the
production operational plan and are formed for each
product. Work sheet is a production order that relates
to production operations and carry information about
them after their execution. Requisition documents
carry information about the amount of manufacturing
resource taken from the warehouse, actual
consumption of that resource and amount of unused
resource returned to the warehouse after execution of
operations that are related to concrete worksheet;
 ProductionTechnology class represents technology
necessary for manufacturing of a product (Element,
material or finished good) and therefore this class is
generalized into AssemblyTechnology,
PreparationTechnology and ProcessingTechnology
classes. Every instance of ProductionTechnology
class relates to one or more instances of
ProductionOperation class and therefore enables
production routing. Every operation is executed on
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some work place and every work place is allocated in
an organizational unit, therefore WorkPlace and
OrganizationalUnit classes are modelled.
VI. CONCLUSION
The presented study indicates the importance of business
process management and business process modelling,
mentions most commonly used business process modelling
and techniques, with a particular focus on usability of these
techniques for software development and shows in which way
Unified Modelling Language diagrams can be used for
modelling of production planning process in a mid-sized
company in Serbia. The final result of the paper is UML class
diagram that consist of crucial identified abstractions i.e.
classes, their attributes and relationships between them.
Developed conceptual, UML class diagram for production
planning process can further be used for development of other
types of UML diagrams and as background for object-oriented
software development.
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