Poor background steps performance

[george_caramaliu@yahoo.com]

Hello everyone,
I need an advice because I am out of options.I have a complex workflow where from time to time some background steps are executed by the system with delay. There is no delay coded inside or set up on the step, as long as it happens only when the system is overloaded.The problem is that the workflow is creating the background step successfully, in the technical log I see the messages "Background work item created" and "Background processing started" immediately after the previous step was completed, but the next entry in the log for the background step with "Execution started" is created with 5 to 60 minutes delay, varying randomly (as attached). Once the execution is started the step is completed very fast, so it is not a problem of the code inside.
The basis consultants checked and it seems that the system has enough TRFC resources assigned in SMQS and recommended to change the settings in SWEQADM regarding event queue administration, more specific the parameters (no of events per read access) for background job execution for event delivery.In my system I have the event queue enabled for 9 events and in this specific workflow one of this queue enabled event is used, but I cannot imagine how the background job execution for event delivery could influence the processing of a background task that is already created but not processed by TRFC.
Any suggestion is welcomed, I am considering also to remove the event from the event queue, as I never had any issues with non queued events, or to increase further the no of events per read access. By the way, does anyone knows what exactly this background job for event queue processing does? It is executed each 2 minutes for a predefined no of events but in the test system the events are triggered and processed immediately, I expected that the events would be processed only by this job, but is seems it is not the case.

Thank you,George CaramaliuSAP Workflow/ABAP consultant    
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