5. Conclusion
The authors have discussed e-business process modeling, regarding traditional business process modeling
methods and Japanese-style management. It is a fact that traditional Japanese-style management used to be
successful; however, the environment that companies are facing is changing, and the requirements for ebusiness
process improvement or re-engineering are also changing, so that the business process modeling
method in turn needs to be enhanced, while maintaining the favorable characteristics of traditional methods. In
this paper, the authors have proposed a modeling tool supporting inter-organizational process flow adjustment
with a business process knowledge management function. This tool would respond to the requirements of both
management and employees and help the inter-organization adjustment process of business process modeling.
This tool also supports continuous improvement (Kaizen) of business processes by knowledge management
functions. As a result, e-business implementation issues and other issues affecting some Japanese companies
or subsidiaries of global companies in Japan mentioned in this paper would move toward being resolved. The
tool can be a bridge to structural modeling for some Japanese, support the utilization of accumulated know-how,
and achieve new value of the hierarchical modeling method (e.g., IDEF, ARIS [26], and DEMO [29]) at the
same time. Though there are successful cases of drastic change with top down approach such as [32] [33],
there are still many cases that companies are struggling against gaps mentioned in this paper. Though, it might
be the tool for supporting a transitional condition for the some parts, the tool the authors propose in this paper
might support some Japanese firms in a deadlock condition. For future research, the authors are planning to
determine the detailed specifications of the tool and have it evaluated by various users such as management and
end users.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported in part by the research grant of Senshu University 2013 (research subject: Study
on inter-organizational adjustment factors about business process re-engineering). We really appreciate the
companies who cooperated in the interviews.