A BIM-data mining integrated digital twin framework for advanced project management

In industry, many business processes are modelled and stored in Enterprise Information Systems (EIS). Tools supporting the verification and validation of business processes can help to improve the quality of these business processes. However, existing tools can not directly be applied to models used in industry. In this paper, we present our approach for model verification and validation: translating industrial models to Petri nets and mCRL2, and subsequently applying existing tools on the models derived from the initial industrial models. The following translations are described: BPMN models to Petri nets and Petri nets to mCRL2. It is shown what the analysis on the derived models can reveal about the original models.

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Transformation of BPMN Models for Behaviour Analysis

The paradigm of service-oriented computing revolutionized the field of software engineering. According to this paradigm, new systems are composed of existing stand-alone services to support complex cross-organizational business processes. Correct communication of these services is not possible without a proper coordination mechanism. The Reo coordination language is a channel-based modeling language that introduces various types of channels and their composition rules. By composing Reo channels, one can specify Reo connectors that realize arbitrary complex behavioral protocols. Several formalisms have been introduced to give semantics to Reo. In their most basic form, they reflect service synchronization and dataflow constraints imposed by connectors. To ensure that the composed system behaves as intended, we need a wide range of automated verification tools to assist service composition designers. In this paper, we present our framework for the verification of Reo using the $${{\tt mCRL2}}$$ toolset. We unify our previous work on mapping various semantic models for Reo, namely, constraint automata, timed constraint automata, coloring semantics and the newly developed action constraint automata, to the process algebraic specification language of $${{\tt mCRL2}}$$, address the correctness of this mapping, discuss tool support, and present a detailed example that illustrates the use of Reo empowered with $${{\tt mCRL2}}$$ for the analysis of dataflow in service-based process models.

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Reo + $${{\tt mCRL2}}$$: A framework for model-checking dataflow in service compositions

Business process models and workow systems aim at guaranteeing efficient and reliable executions of business processes. For this, they require detailed specifications of the individual steps that need to be taken during the process execution. As defining such process definitions from scratch requires good knowledge of both the domain of the process as well as the process modeling technique, process modeling is often cumbersome and prone to errors that inhibit sound process executions. For that reason, many providers of process modeling software as well as process consultants offer so-called reference process models or template repositories. These repositories provide established process specifications for both general as well as industry specific processes, from travel approvals to invoice verifications. Still, even for such common processes, execution variations exist among organizations. Hence, organizations have to adapt the templates manually to individual requirements. The process modeling skills required for these adaptations are equal to the skills required for modeling from scratch. This PhD thesis suggests reducing the need for manual process model adaptations by integrating variations among different process executions into a single process model | a configurable process model. In the configurable model, process configuration allows inhibiting executing any undesired tasks. In this way, a process model providing exactly the behavior desired by an organization can be derived without manual process modeling efforts. For defining configurable process models, the thesis first provides a formal specification of process model configuration by analyzing how behavior is added to process models and defining process configuration as the inverse. In this way, blocking and hiding of behavior, originally defined as concepts to discover inheritance relations among dynamic behavior, are identified as the two techniques to restrict behavior of configurable process models. The practical feasibility of the suggested approach is demonstrated through depicting how process configuration can be added to the process modeling languages of existing workow systems, namely SAP WebFlow, BPEL, and YAWL. An actual implementation is provided for YAWL. It even allows configuring the process model through natural language questions by mapping the various configuration options to pre-defined answers in a questionnaire. The framework has been tested in a case study where configurable process models were developed for registration processes executed in municipalities like the registration of a newborn child or a marriage. The developed models thus allow deriving a configured, individual process variant by simply answering a questionnaire on desired and undesired options of the process. The resulting model variant is directly executable in the YAWL system environment. The models and the overall approach have afterwards also been evaluated through interviews with various stakeholders in the process configuration lifecycle. Two main challenges arise for defining and using configurable process models: On the one hand, the creation of a process model integrating various process variants obviously requires far more work than building a process model covering only one of these variants. For that reason, the thesis suggests a set of process mining techniques, which can help in the construction of a configurable process model, e.g. by merging individual process models. On the other hand, process configuration allows restricting the process behavior depicted in the configurable process model further than desired, up to the point that the process is not executable anymore. This is addressed through discussing a range of constraints on the process model configuration that are able to guarantee sound processes.

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Configurable process models

Context: The Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) standard informally defines a precise execution semantics. It defines how process instances should be updated in a model during execution. Existing formalizations of the standard are incomplete and rely on mappings to other languages. Objective: This paper provides a BPMN 2.0 semantics formalization that is more complete and intuitive than existing formalizations. Method: The formalization consists of in-place graph transformation rules that are documented visually using BPMN syntax. In-place transformations update models directly and do not require mappings to other languages. We have used a mature tool and test-suite to develop a reference implementation of all rules. Results: Our formalization is a promising complement to the standard, in particular because all rules have been extensively verified and because conceptual validation is facilitated (the informal semantics also describes in-place updates). Conclusion: Since our formalization has already revealed problems with the standard and since the BPMN is still evolving, the maintainers of the standard can benefit from our results. Moreover, tool vendors can use our formalization and reference implementation for verifying conformance to the standard.

https://is.ieis.tue.nl/staff/pvgorp/research/VanGorpDijkman2012ISTBPMN2accepted.pdf

A visual token-based formalization of BPMN 2.0 based on in-place transformations

This paper describes a software framework supporting the automated verification of models. The framework allows analyzing different kinds of behavioral models of software systems and business processes like UML activity diagrams and BPEL models. To extend the applicability of the verification tools, a variety of transformation tools have been integrated in the framework.

Ivo Raedts

Papers

Transformation of BPMN Models for Behaviour Analysis

A software framework for automated verification