An Organizational Systems Perspective to Business Process Modeling in Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs): a Case of Food Production*

Taking an organizational systems perspective, this paper presents a review to business process modelling and examines the case of food manufacture in a Small to Medium Sized Enterprise (SME), which operates in Cyprus. As a result of the modelling and analysis carried out, areas of concern, issues and opportunities are identified and explored taking into consideration the current business environment of the SME, by focusing on the decision making processes of the production and scheduling activities. The knowledge gained from the modelling effort provides a deeper understanding of the operations and interrelationships between important processes such as “Make”, “Buy”, “Sell” and “Manage”. This proves to be useful for the effective re-design of a production/scheduling decision support system in the particular firm but it also represents the first step towards for the long term development of a generic framework for managerial decision making which takes into consideration the limitations and particularities of manufacturing SMEs.