4.3. Business Process Knowledge Management Function
In order to maintain the business process effectively in an environment of rapid change, a continuous
improvement (Kaizen, originally a Japanese word) scheme would work well. Kaizen is a method that has been
used in the Japanese automobile industry for a long time, but is now used in many companies over the world.
It was developed in order to adjust to environmental change [27]. Jun et al. de fined the concept of process
knowledge and classi fied it into three types: process template knowledge, process instance knowledge, and
process-related knowledge [28]:
x Process template knowledge: The process template plus analysis and simulation information derived from
the template design phase. It also includes the history of the evolution of the template.
x Process instance knowledge: A set of process instance information along with process performance
measurement according to the evaluation criteria of a given enterprise. It also contains information about
environmental, resource, results, and so on.
x Process-related knowledge: A knowledge set created and used within a business process. General explicit
knowledge of traditional knowledge management is summarized from the point of the process perspective.