Abstract
Business Process Simulation is considered by many a very useful technique to analyze the impact of some important choices designers take at process design or optimization time, right before processes are actually implemented and deployed. In order for the simulation to provide accurate and reliable results, process models need to take into account not just the workflow dynamics, but also many other important factors that may impact on the overall performance of process execution, and that form what we refer to as the Context of a process. In this paper we formalize a new Business Process Model that encompasses all the features of a business process in terms of workflow and execution Context respectively. The model allows designers to build a cost-centric perspective of a business process. Also, we propose an extension to the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) specification with the aim of enhancing the power of the BPMN to also model resources and the process execution environment. In the paper we provide some details of the implementation of a novel Business Process Simulator capable of simulating the newly introduced process model. To prove the overall approach’s viability, a case study is finally discussed.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
- 5.
- 6.
For the purpose of this work the engine of the Renew tool was used: www.renew.de.
- 7.
It is up to the designer to define as many context scenarios as they like. The system is capable of simulating many scenarios and producing the relative reports.
- 8.
The graphical notation adopted to depict the Petri Net is taken from the Renew tool.
References
Van der Aalst, W.M.P.: Business process simulation revisited. In: Barjis, J. (ed.) EOMAS 2010. LNBIP, vol. 63, pp. 1–14. Springer, Heidelberg (2010). doi:10.1007/978-3-642-15723-3_1
Van der Aalst, W.M.P., Nakatumba, J., Rozinat, A., Russell, N.: Business process simulation: how to get it right. In: vom Brocke, J., Rosemann, M. (eds.) International Handbook on Business Process Management. Springer, Berlin (2008)
Van der Aalst, W.M.P., Ter Hofstede, A.H.M.: YAWL: yet another workflow language. Inf. Syst. 30(4), 245–275 (2005)
Cartelli, V., Di Modica, G., Tomarchio, O.: A Resource-aware simulation tool for Business Processes. In: ICE-B 2014 - Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on e-Business, pp. 123–133, Vienna (Austria), August 2014
Cartelli, V., Di Modica, G., Tomarchio, O.: A Cost-centric model for context-aware simulations of business processes. In: IC3K 2015 - Proceedings of the 7th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management, pp. 303–314, Lisbon (Portugal), November 2015
Cooper, R., Kaplan, R.S.: Activity-based systems: measuring the costs of resource usage. Account. Horiz. 6, 1–12 (1992)
Dijkman, R.M., Dumas, M., Ouyang, C.: Semantics and analysis of business process models in BPMN. Inf. Softw. Technol. 50(12), 1281–1294 (2008)
Gottschalk, F., Van der Aalst, W., Jansen-Vullers, M., Verbeek, H.: Protos2CPN: using colored Petri nets for configuring and testing business processes. Int. J. Softw. Tools Technol. Transfer 10(1), 95–110 (2008)
Jansen-vullers, M.H., Netjes, M.: Business process simulation a tool survey. In: Workshop and Tutorial on Practical Use of Coloured Petri Nets and the CPN (2006)
Jensen, K.: Coloured Petri Nets: Basic Concepts, Analysis Methods and Practical Use. Springer, London (1996)
Kherbouche, O., Ahmad, A., Basson, H.: Using model checking to control the structural errors in BPMN models. In: 2013 IEEE Seventh International Conference on Research Challenges in Information Science (RCIS), pp. 1–12, May 2013
Koizumi, S., Koyama, K.: Workload-aware business process simulation with statistical service analysis and Timed Petri Net. In: Proceedings - 2007 IEEE International Conference on Web Services, ICWS 2007, pp. 70–77 (2007)
OMG: The UML Specification, July 2005. http://www.omg.org/spec/UML/2.0/
OMG: Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN 2.0), January 2011. http://www.omg.org/spec/BPMN/2.0/
Ouyang, C., Wynn, M., Fidge, C., ter Hofstede, A., Kuhr, J.C.: Modelling complex resource requirements in business process management systems. In: ACIS 2010 Proceedings - 21st Australasian Conference on Information Systems (2010)
Porter, M.E.: Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance. Free Press, New York (1985)
Scheer, A.-W., Nüttgens, M.: ARIS architecture and reference models for business process management. In: Aalst, W., Desel, J., Oberweis, A. (eds.) Business Process Management. LNCS, vol. 1806, pp. 376–389. Springer, Heidelberg (2000). doi:10.1007/3-540-45594-9_24
Weske, M.: Business Process Management: Concepts, Languages, Architectures, 2nd edn. Springer, Heidelberg (2012)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Cartelli, V., Di Modica, G., Tomarchio, O. (2016). Extending the BPMN Specification to Support Cost-Centric Simulations of Business Processes. In: Fred, A., Dietz, J., Aveiro, D., Liu, K., Filipe, J. (eds) Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management. IC3K 2015. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 631. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52758-1_26
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52758-1_26
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-52757-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-52758-1
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)