Systems Architects and Engineers specialising in the effective use of Systems Architecture, Methods and Tools since 1982

Tailor a Flow

Once found, a flow can be tailored to show a specific aspect or may be left complete. Use the facilities of the flow finder form to remove unwanted branches or otherwise simplify a flow, move to the from or to item of the link to be removed and click the Erase Item button. Note that this button doubles as an Erase Flow button to remove a complete flow specification; the button label changes according to the current position of the cursor.

To specify or change the values used for the proportion of the flow traffic which passes through alternative branches, go to the Vol field of the appropriate link and enter the desired value. For example, if order confirmation to a customer is carried out on average .8 of the time by fax and .2 of the time by letter, enter .8 in the Vol field for the link which goes to the "Confirm by Fax" process and .2 in the Vol field of the link which goes to the "Confirm by Letter" process. Note that values entered in this way are not carried over to the defined volume attribute but are treated as temporary values used for simulation. Similarly, the number of repetitions of a sphere item (a node in the flow) may be entered in the Rpt field for from items which start a link or in the Rpt field for to items which form an end point to a branch. Access to this field is only available for end point items. For example, if a flow begins with the process of contacting a customer and it is known that this requires an average 2.5 repetitions to achieve a result, enter 2.5 in the Frm Rpt field of the "Contact Customer" process in its role as the from item of a link.

Attribute Totals

If your sphere item attributes have been defined with the inclusion of numeric items which define the time or cost for the flow items, you can use the system to calculate totals of these for the flow as defined above. That is, the totals will be constructed based on the number of repetitions of each item or node varied by the proportion of the traffic which flows through the node. To recalculate, click the Recalc Tots button when the revised totals will be shown in the Item Attribute Summary box at the bottom of the form. Note that this box doubles as a display of the attributes of a specific sphere item depending on the position of the cursor. When a from or to sphere item or node is highlighted, the box label changes to "

Check a Flow

A flow's logical contents can be checked by clicking the Test Flow button. This checks whether a flow remains authentic after changes have been made in its underlying relations as well as checking the logic of a new flow. Concepts checked are: