Process modeling

About: Process modeling is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 11639 publications have been published within this topic receiving 223996 citations. The topic is also known as: process simulation.

Business Process Simulation Revisited

Abstract: Computer simulation attempts to “mimic” real-life or hypothetical behavior on a computer to see how processes or systems can be improved and to predict their performance under different circumstances. Simulation has been successfully applied in many disciplines and is considered to be a relevant and highly applicable tool in Business Process Management (BPM). Unfortunately, in reality the use of simulation is limited. Few organizations actively use simulation. Even organizations that purchase simulation software (stand-alone or embedded in some BPM suite), typically fail to use it continuously over an extended period. This keynote paper highlights some of the problems causing the limited adoption of simulation. For example, simulation models tend to oversimplify the modeling of people working part-time on a process. Also simulation studies typically focus on the steady-state behavior of business processes while managers are more interested in short-term results (a “fast forward button” into the future) for operational decision making. This paper will point out innovative simulation approaches leveraging on recent breakthroughs in process mining.

Probabilistic optimization of semantic process model matching

Abstract: Business process models are increasingly used by companies, often yielding repositories of several thousand models. These models are of great value for business analysis such as service identification or process standardization. A problem is though that many of these analyses require the pairwise comparison of process models, which is hardly feasible to do manually given an extensive number of models. While the computation of similarity between a pair of process models has been intensively studied in recent years, there is a notable gap on automatically matching activities of two process models. In this paper, we develop an approach based on semantic techniques and probabilistic optimization. We evaluate our approach using a sample of admission processes from different universities.

Case Study and Maturity Model for Business Process Management Implementation

Abstract: This paper presents the implementation of Business Process Management in a large international company. The business case illustrates the main objectives and approach taken with the BPM initiative. It introduces a process management maturity assessment which was developed to assess the implementation of Business Process Management and the achievements. The maturity model is based on nine categories which comprehensively cover all aspects which impact the success of Business Process Management. Some findings of the first assessment cycle are pinpointed to illustrate the benefits and best practice exchange as a result of the assessment.

Discovering colored Petri nets from event logs

Abstract: Process-aware information systems typically log events (e.g., in transaction logs or audit trails) related to the actual execution of business processes. Analysis of these execution logs may reveal important knowledge that can help organizations to improve the quality of their services. Starting from a process model, which can be discovered by conventional process mining algorithms, we analyze how data attributes influence the choices made in the process based on past process executions using decision mining, also referred to as decision point analysis. In this paper we describe how the resulting model (including the discovered data dependencies) can be represented as a Colored Petri Net (CPN), and how further perspectives, such as the performance and organizational perspective, can be incorporated. We also present a CPN Tools Export plug-in implemented within the ProM framework. Using this plug-in, simulation models in ProM obtained via a combination of various process mining techniques can be exported to CPN Tools. We believe that the combination of automatic discovery of process models using ProM and the simulation capabilities of CPN Tools offers an innovative way to improve business processes. The discovered process model describes reality better than most hand-crafted simulation models. Moreover, the simulation models are constructed in such a way that it is easy to explore various redesigns.