## 1 Introduction
### Proposition  
We hypothesize that business process management (BPM) can be applied for manufacturing processes, to alleviate the problems encountered in smart manufacturing. BPM is a discipline in operations management in which people use various methods to discover, model, analyse, measure, improve, optimize, and automate (end-to-end) business processes [38; 39]. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{p{14.2 pt} p{142.3 pt} p{142.3 pt}} \hline \hline
**Nr** & **Traditional Manufacturing System** & **Smart Manufacturing System** \\ \hline \hline  & Limited and Predetermined Resources. To build a fixed line for mass production of a special product type, the needed resources are carefully calculated, tailored, and configured to minimize resource redundancy. & Diverse Resources. To produce multiple types of small-lot products, more resources of different types should be able to coexist in the system. \\ \cline{2-3}  & Fixed Routing. The production line is fixed unless manually reconfigured by people with system power down. & Dynamic Routing. When switching between different types of products, the needed resources and the route to link these resources should be reconfigured automatically and on-line. \\ \cline{2-3}  & Shop Floor Control Network. The field buses may be used to connect the controller with its slave stations. But communication among machines is not necessary. & Comprehensive Connections. The machines, products, information systems, and people are connected and interact with each other through the high-speed network infrastructure. \\ \cline{2-3}  & Separated Layer. The field devices are separated from the upper information systems. & Deep Convergence. The smart factory operates in a networked environment where the wireless network and the cloud integrate all the physical artefacts and information systems to form the IoT and services. \\ \cline{2-3}  & Independent Control. Every machine is pre-programmed to perform the assigned functions. Any malfunction of single device will break the full line. Isolated Information. The machine may record its own process information. But this information is seldom used by others. & Self-Organization. The control function distributes to multiple entities. These smart entities negotiate with each other to organize themselves to cope with system dynamics. \\ \cline{2-3}  & Range of the precise features and components of a smart factory, the local increase Although BPM was born out of the principles of production engineering, it has been most successful in industry sectors that process information, rather than physical material. Most prominently, BPM has been implemented extensively and successfully in financial service organisations [40; 41]. Nevertheless, several other industry sectors have also seen benefits from the application of BPM, including sectors with a 'physical nature' like automotive [42] and transportation [43]. However, these applications of BPM almost exclusively focus on the business management functions in those industry sectors, rather than the activities that 'touch' the product. A surprising outlier is the healthcare sector, where patient handling processes are modelled and sometimes enacted using a business process management system (BPMS) [44; 45; 46; 47; 48]. The advent of the Internet-of-Things (IoT) has sparked the combination of physical objects and business process management [49], but most of this work is in a rather early stage, without adequate attention to structured approaches for modelling complex applications. The potential benefits of BPM in manufacturing has been considered though, especially with the rise of smart technologies [50; 51]. Indeed, BPM holds distinct advantages of interest in this research, especially for small and medium enterprises. Table 2 shows how BPM may help to alleviate the problems identified in Section 1. The solutions listed in Table 2 often rely on a business process management system (BPMS).