A Package Delivery Company located in Belgium processes around 300,000 packages on a daily basis.

The package delivery process is fairly simple and consists of 4 basic steps. Each package is given a bar code which is scanned at different points throughout the process. The scanned barcodes, together with a large set of metadata (time and location of scanning, reason for scanning, etc.) is stored in a database and processed by a state machine. The processed information is subsequently used for reporting, tracking & tracing packages, invoicing, and handling of packages. In the future new scanning and tracking methods such as RFID (Radio frequency identification) and GPS should be added to the system.

The current setup is very complex. Over time, it has developed up to 7 different databases and a state machine configuration which has many relationships between different states, events and event reasons, some of which are not always clear.

This has led to a situation where the state machine has become a black box and nobody really understands its full functioning. In this context the link with the business process has become unclear and uncertainty about the correct configuration of the state machine has risen.

The goal of this analysis is to:

• Open the black box and gain insight into the functioning of the system.
• Evaluate the correctness of the configuration of the state machine.
• Investigate a number of abnormal flows that have been identified by business users.
• Link the different states and events back to the business process.