Easy Flow: New Generation Business Process Model

Purpose Due to a lack of event data, organizations using Business Process Management may struggle to update their process models whenever business process changes occur. As such, alternative data sources are needed to detect and monitor business process changes. Design/methodology/approach We conducted interviews with domain experts to analyze real business processes and classify any identified changes using Reijers and Mansar's framework on business process redesign heuristics. Based on the results, we proposed a taxonomy of entity groups as well as a method for identifying entities in process models based on the taxonomy. With this method, we define how to create a mapping between entities and process models, forming a framework to identify outdated process models through monitoring the entities. Findings The analyses of 25 business processes let us define three entity groups that form our taxonomy. We confirmed the feasibility of our entity identification method by classifying process elements of 85 pre-existing process models according to the taxonomy. Regarding the mapping that forms the basis of our framework, we found it necessary to define requirement recommendations to ensure its consistency and rigor. Originality/value This study offers a novel approach to handling the challenges of business process change. By emphasizing the identification and use of entities in the analysis of business process changes, it provides a holistic approach to monitoring the work systems of an organization.

A concept is introduced in this article which has strong practical impact for computer aided system configuration. System configuration is a cumbersome and fault sensitive task while setting up systems in a broad range of business applications like ERP (enterprise resource planning) and other workflow-systems. Given a generic process or workflow model in YAWL-notation (yet another workflow language) or any other process modeling language like business process model and notation or WFMC (workflow management coalition), it could be stated that, by using a set of reduction rules as introduced, it is possible to generate a hierarchically structured tree of sub graphs of the workflow graph-representation. According to the notation used, authors call these sub graphs facts. The tree structure of the graph-representation on one hand and the logical relation between the branches and leafs of the tree on the other can be utilized to create a set of constraints and dependencies among the single facts. Some researchers showed that the nested branches can be associated to (predefined) questions with respect to the configuration of a workflow management system, for instance an ERP-application. They presented an algorithm which dynamically sorts the questions and answers in a maximum efficient configuration path, while working through the corresponding questionnaire. By combining the different elements as facts, constraints on questions, and configuration space, it is thus possible to algorithmically generate the efficient structured and interactive questionnaire for the configuration of workflow systems and algorithmically check the consistency (dead lock free, free of synchronization structural conflict) of the underlying workflow model. The concept was tested in the prototype of the interactive questionnaire for configuration of the web-service based ERP-Application

Business process modelling is an important part of system design. When designing or redesigning a business process, stakeholders specify, negotiate, and agree on business requirements to be satisfied, including non-functional requirements that concern the quality of the business process. This thesis addresses the question of how to specify and compute the quality of a business process, given the model that stakeholders use. The motivation for this thesis is the increasing importance of the quality of business processes. Knowing the quality of specific business processes enables stakeholders to judge if these processes need improvement. Knowing the quality of the constructs of those processes (viz., events, inputs, activities, and outputs) and the way they are structured enables a more detailed analysis of their shortcomings and provides a basis for the design of improvements. The research challenge of this thesis is grounded in the assumption that: “Organisations need an appropriate means to effectively compute achievement of their goals and objectives by their business processes.” Given this challenge, the main research question on which this thesis focuses is: “Can the quality of a business process be computed quantitatively at different levels of granularity?” The research objective is: “To develop frameworks, factors, and metrics for computing non-functional requirements (quality) of business processes quantitatively at different levels of granularity.” The outcomes of this thesis are: 1) BPIMM, a language-independent business process integrating meta-model, based on the concepts of seven mainstream business process modelling languages: BPMN, EPC, RAD, UML AD, SADT, IDEF0, and IDEF3. 2) BPC-QC (Business Process Concept - Quality Computation), an approach to quality computation at the lowest level of granularity of a business process. The approach consists of: i. BPC-QEF (Business Process Concept - Quality Evaluation Framework), a language-independent generic framework and algorithm to compute the quality of the constructs of a business process: event, input, activity, and output. ii. A set of business process quality dimensions and factors. The following quality dimensions are distinguished: performance, efficiency, reliability, recoverability, permissibility, and availability. Each dimension categorises different quality aspects in terms of factors. A non-exhaustive set of sixteen quantitative factors is provided. iii. Quality metrics for each of the quality factors, to facilitate a quantitative computation of the quality of a specific construct of a business process. 3) BP-QC (Business Process - Quality Computation), an approach to compute the quality at the highest level of granularity of a business process. The approach consists of: i. BP-CQCF (Business Process - Compositional Quality Computation Framework), a language-independent generic framework and algorithm to compute the quality of a business process as a whole, given the quality of its constructs. ii. A set of generic business process modelling patterns to decompose a business process into more succinct parts, namely: sequential, parallel with synchronisation, exclusive, inclusive, simple loop, and complex loop. iii. A set of over one hundred computational formulae. For each combination of modelling pattern and a quality factor, there is a formula to compute the quality. 4) AAV (Approach to Application and Validation), an evaluation plan to evaluate BPIMM, BPC-QC and BP-QC in practice, together with expert stakeholders. The plan consists of the units of measure, a measurement model, and a case study procedure. To evaluate the applicability of the contributions of this thesis to real world business needs, four case studies have been conducted in different environments: a Dutch educational institution, a global financial institution, an international financial service provider, and a Dutch research project on crisis management. Each of these case studies concerns a different, single business process. This thesis shows that: 1) A quality computation approach can be adopted independent of a business process modelling language. 2) Quantitative quality factors can be introduced specifically for the constructs of a business process. 3) Quantitative metrics and computational formulae can be developed for specific quality factors, allowing the computation of different aspects of the quality of a business process quantitatively at different levels of granularity. 4) An evaluation plan can be developed to evaluate the applicability of the contributions of this thesis (viz., BPIMM, BPC-QC, and BP-QC). The contributions of this thesis are designed to be beneficial to the areas of business and management, requirements engineering, software engineering, and business process modelling. In the areas of requirements engineering and software engineering, these contributions are intended to help practitioners to consider non-functional requirements at the earliest stage. In the area of business process modelling, information systems, service computing, and cloud computing, the contributions can be used for quality-driven modelling, design, and redesign. To conclude, knowing the quality value of a business process at different levels of granularity provides a basis for its improvement.

The use of process fragments to leverage reuse of process models is well established in the literature. Process fragments are manually or semi-automatically extracted and mainly focus on the textual or behavioural semantics of the process models that they are extracted from. However, in many use cases we also need to use these fragments to derive synthetic process models that satisfy specific structural properties. In order to tackle this challenge we propose a method for automatically generating synthetic, representative, executable process models expressed in Business Process Model and Notation 2.0 (BPMN 2.0) with respect to specific user-defined structural criteria. Our method identifies, selects, and combines recurring sub-structures discovered in a collection of thousands of real world process models. The recurring sub-structures are seen as an extended type of process fragments. For our method we have developed a proof-of-concept prototype and for this we discuss the experimental results obtained from its evaluation.

Propagating changes between aligned process models

Business process modeling (BPM) is one of the key technologies to benefit enterprises with higher efficiencies and greater business values. However, BPM requires intensive business expertise and human resources. Thus, it is valuable and challenging to enable fast delivery of reusable business process designs, regarding the existence of various popular business processes modeling languages and fast changing markets. In this paper, we generate language-specific business process models and process interaction semantics from UML 2.0 process models. A WS-BPEL metadata model and a process interaction semantics metadata model is defined to annotate UML 2.0 business process model as stereotypes; with a set of transformation patterns, we can generate a WS-BPEL business process model and a process interaction semantics file from each annotated UML 2.0 process model. Our approach can also be similarly applied to other process modeling languages to highly reuse the business process model in UML 2.0.

Information System is one of the key domain in which lot of research has been done in the past few years. Applying Information systems to heterogeneous and distributed environments is one of the current research areas. Business Process Management Systems is the information systems which deal with the administration of tasks in the business processes, organizational structures, or in the related context. The Workflow Management system, the early idea of BPM, controls the workflow in an organization, data transfer, and integration of legacy information systems with existing programs and program modules, delegation of business tasks. Offering task management services especially modeling of business processes and underlying organizations, BPM serves it meaning and incorporates the WFM system. BPM supporting the use of knowledge concerning the awareness/unawareness of integrated software, and analysis of processes and organizational structure in terms of verification, modification, evaluation are key management in BPM system I.INTRODUCTION TO BPM: Combination of corporate restructuring and mergers urged the department and processes to be automated and linked together. Unfortunately it created largely disconnected spaghetti of systems and applications. Business Process Management (BPM) was born from a strong need to streamline internal processes and connections between both internal and external functions. It provides ability to model, monitor, manage and manipulate processes quickly in response to changes in strategy and market forces. BPM is an extension of classical Work Flow Management (WFM) systems and approaches. BPM delivers the maximum utility of legacy system. It is a method for revolutionizing the way the work moves throughout an organization. II.COMPONENTS OF BPM: The four key elements in Business Process Management are: Process modeling, Process rule, Process management, and Process performance analytics. Process modeling: Process modeling describes the flow of information (business process).It helps in building a model of process and mapping into an implementation frame work. Modeling requires a consistent analysis and representation of the processes. It forms the basis for the userspecific process environment. Process Rule: Process Rule is a heart of the BPM. It involves execution of discrete steps & integration of information. A process rules engine is used for this purpose. The engine is to monitor and manage the given steps by providing a flow control over the business process. If a process fails or delayed, a compensated action can be done to rectify. Process Management: Process Management is to correlate business/application events to fundamental business metrics .It enables the organization to monitor and optimize the business process. Once the process has been analyzed, modeled and the associated rules are formed. The next stage involves the visualization and management. Visualization means transaction data ranging from holistic to process-state or client state specific rules. Process Performance Analytics: Process Performance Analytics is a transition data source available for sophisticated management analytics .This data should be available on a retrospective or real-time basis. It should answer to one of the most difficult question like “how much does it cost to process a specific transaction?” By this way BPM mainly addresses four components. They are Work Flow Management, Content and records management Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) and Business Activity monitoring (BAM). III.RELEVENCE TO SYSTEM INTEGRATION: BPM can be fitted easily on the top of existing IT system. It is the Process rules that governs all the happenings and optimizes the process. BPM will not be able to work without the connectivity provided by the EAI layer. EAI layer provides BPM to gain and measure the value from the investment. On the other hand, BPM provides value to the EAI technology layer of Information technology. BPM layer offers business management the view of the message processing layer. It is used to unlock the value of the information held in the integration layer. It is also used to gather data of every transaction in the lifecycle. IV.APPLICATION OF BPM: BPM can be applied to any application which needs these advantages. BPM reduces unnecessary high losses in time critical transactions, helps to provide any critical information, practical application yield fast ROI ,better control over the information, identifying and maximizing the benefits faster, better analysis and tracking, provides enterprise-wide visibility of business processes, improve the effectiveness of the core operations, provides ability to coordinate interactions between information systems, business process and the people, flexible and easily changed by non-technical business people.

Business processes and information systems mutually affect each other in non-trivial ways. Frequently, the business process design and the information system design are not well aligned. This means that business processes are designed without taking the information system impact into account, and vice versa. Missing alignment at design time often results in quality problems at runtime, such as large response times of information systems, large process execution times, overloaded information systems or interrupted processes. Aligning business process quality and information system quality at design time requires to
\nsolve the following problems (P). Business process quality and information system quality have to be characterized. P1: In contrast to information system quality, which is specified in the ISO/IEC 9126 standard, for example, there is no common and comprehensive understanding of business process quality. P2: Beyond that, current business process
\nmodeling notations do not aim to represent quality aspects. The impact of a business process on the quality of an information system, and vice versa, is unknown at design
\ntime. P3: The mutual impact between business processes and information systems must be predicted at design time.
\nIn this thesis, the Business Process Quality Reference-Model (BPQRM), a quality model for business processes, is introduced. The model allows for a comprehensive characterization of business process quality (P1). The BPQRM is applied successfully in a case study to
\nidentify potential for process quality improvement in practice. Based on the BPQRM an existing process modeling notation is extended by model elements to represent quality
\naspects (P2). Simulation is a powerful means to predict the impact of a business process on the quality of an information system, and vice versa, at design time. This thesis proposes two simulation approaches to predict the mutual impact between business processes and information systems, in terms of performance (P3). The approach Business
\nIT Impact Simulation (BIIS) defines interfaces between the business process simulation and the information system simulation. Performance-relevant information is exchanged
\nvia the interfaces between both simulations. Using business process simulation and information system simulation in isolation, workload burstiness is not adequately reflected.
\nThis is especially true for occasional, volatile peak loads. Workload burstiness can significantly affect the performance of business processes and information systems. The approach Integrated Business IT Impact Simulation (IntBIIS) for the integration of business processes and information systems in a single simulation allows for reflecting workload burstiness correctly. The simulation approaches support the comparison of design alternatives and the verification of a certain design against requirements. A case study confirms the feasibility in practice and the acceptance from practitioners’ point of
\nview.

Organizations often change their business processes in reaction to changes in the environment or as a result of improvement efforts. These changes lead to adjustments in the Business Process Support (BPS) system. The impact of a change in a business process may extend beyond the specific point that has been changed, affecting preconditions required for other activities, outputs to be created, or requiring new inputs. This article introduces a concept of a scope of a change, whose identification facilitates focused efforts when adjusting the BPS system to changes in business processes. The article presents a taxonomy of modifications that can be made to a process model and characterizes different modification types in terms of possible scopes of the changes made. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Collaboration and coordination between organizations are necessary in today's business environment, and are enabled by inter-organizational processes. Many approaches for the construction of such processes have been proposed in recent years. However, due to the lack of standard terminology it is hard to evaluate and select a solution that fits a specific business scenario. The paper proposes a conceptual model which depicts the nature of interaction between organizations through business processes under specific business requirements that emphasize the privacy and autonomy of the participating organizations. The model is generic, and relies on the generic process model (GPM) framework and on Bunge's ontology. Being generic and theory-based, we propose to use the model as a basis for comparing and evaluating design and implementation-level approaches for inter-organizational processes. We demonstrate the evaluation procedure by applying it to three existing approaches.

Business Process Management is widely used in enterprises, and modeling and validation of cross enterprise services composition is key challenge to ensure the correctness of cross enterprise collaboration. As the detail of a business process in one enterprise is not suitable for open to other enterprises, this makes the modeling and validation of cross enterprise services composition more complex than traditional service composition. Target on this problem, a new method is proposed. Local business processes is modeled as a composition of local activities. Cross enterprise business process is modeled as a composition of concurrent local business processes. In order to validate the cross enterprise business process, different input messages are provide to cover all branches of condition and PI Calculus expression will continue evolve. By analyzing the input messages and the result of calculus, it's easy to find the error. In order to hide the detail of the local process, equivalence rule is introduced to provide an equivalent process for collaboration. The equivalent process is equivalent to original process as they have same input and output. This novel Cross enterprise services composition method provides new feature than traditional service composition method. Firstly, it makes it available for modeling and validation of cross enterprise services composition based on strict formal method. Secondly, it makes it safe to open the business process of an enterprise to other enterprise because the business process open is not the real business process but an equivalent process with same input and output.

Nowadays business processes are main concern in enterprises systems. The growing systems affect business process changes. Business processes always grow in order to fulfill the business activities. In this paper, we use a graph model called Petri Nets to analyze complex business processes. A Petri Net is the most usable model which often represents a process system in business concerns or others. Business processes are modeled using Petri Nets; then, the Petri Nets are separated into simpler fragments in order to make the analysis easier. In this context, we propose a method for developing an effective and efficient workflow repository system by using minimal functional subnet concept for generating common workflow in Petri Nets models. Thus process could lead to compose a new workflow. The results show that a complex business process can be decomposed into functional subnets which are smaller as well as simpler fragments of a complex business process. Then, the functional subnets are classified based on control-flow patterns in order to identify subnet roles in work-flow management. Later, we extract common fragments of functional subnets and use them for composing a new models of Petri Nets workflow required by user.

The article is aimed at improving the theoretical and methodical instrumentarium for automating business processes in the context of developing a universal algorithm for optimizing and automating business processes of an enterprise using the stochastic modeling method and WorkFlow techniques – EPC. As result of the research, the authors’ approaches to defining the fundamental principles of automation of enterprise business processes are analyzed. The expediency of practical use of the stochastic modeling method and WorkFlow techniques – EPC for optimization of business processes is specified. Practical recommendations on the management of automation of business processes at the domestic enterprise using the stochastic modeling method are provided. It is proved that the use of the proposed algorithm of automation of business processes makes it possible to significantly increase the likelihood of its urgent and unimpeded implementation (in terms of the project implementation). Prospects for further research in this direction are the analysis of the problems of evaluating the efficiency of business processes of enterprise, in particular, the use of the control points method for the formation of an intra-organization system of audit for basic business processes. Specific notations of business process modeling in the context of their application in the realities of domestic doing business require additional research and analysis.

Organizations must comply with a number of external and internal regulations for business governance and must ensure that their processes are running accordingly to requirements of regulations. Therefore business process and regulations compliance analysis audit and management tasks take a very important role in daily operational activities for each organization. Due to high complexity this task can become challenging. In some domains regulations are changing rapidly. Process models must be flexible and easy adjustable to changing requirements, since the lack of ability to comply with regulations can lower down the competitiveness of an organizations. Thus, rapid changes of regulations require rapid changes of related business processes. The goal of the PhD work is to develop business process and regulations compliance management technology which should enable business process construction from regulations and change monitoring of regulations and business processes to ensure easy and rapid modification of business process model or regulations, thus also ensuring compliance.

Web services are changing the way in which the World Wide Web is currently being used. The Web was created originally to support human-to-computer interactions with textual and graphical data. Today, people use the Web to read the latest news, buy consumer goods, search for information, and obtain stock quotes. However, the Web does not yet support effective computer-to-computer interactions between software applications of different enterprises. Web services can enable Internet-based software applications of different enterprises to interact with each other directly by providing application programs with the ability to invoke operations that otherwise would be invoked manually by a human through a browser. Web services can run not only on mainframe computers and server computers, but also on desktop computers and client handsets. Web services allow individuals and organizations to publish links to their software applications, just as they publish links to their Web pages. Web services solve the enterprise application integration (EAI) problem by enabling interaction among different applications within the same organization. They can also enable computer-to-computer applications of different organizations to interact without human intervention. For example, Web services can be used for reservation systems, order-tracking systems, and business supply chains. In the example shown in Figure 1, Company A (a customer) orders goods from Company B (a distributor). Company B checks the availability of the goods from Company C (a supplier), and then arranges for payment and shipping of the goods to Company A without human intervention. Performance, security, and reliability are factors that will limit the use of Web services unless those issues can be properly addressed. Nonetheless, the potential widespread use and benefits of Web services are very compelling. Web services allow disparate computing systems and applications to be coupled together, and they enable enterprises to streamline and automate their business processes.