Using business process management simulation to support continuous improvements in higher education management system

Quality assurance has become an increasing importance topic in higher-education institutions. The countries that have signed the Bologna Declaration are agree to develop a quality-assurance process and governing body to ensure standard qualifications and quality throughout participating countries. The process approach is one of the crucial issues of the quality assurance models with description of responsibility, authority, procedures, plans and available resources. This research aims to support the decision about the organisation (resources allocation, process sequence, etc.) to improve the performance level. The main importance regards the simulation analysis instead of the only process description proposed in literature. The method proposed concerns the process modelling, defining the main influences for the performance and the simulation models for the numerical analysis. A case study in an Italian university based on the proposed method is developed improving the organisation with higher performance.