@article{HaarmannHolfterPufahletal.2021, author = {Haarmann, Stephan and Holfter, Adrian and Pufahl, Luise and Weske, Mathias}, title = {Formal framework for checking compliance of data-driven case management}, series = {Journal on data semantics : JoDS}, volume = {10}, journal = {Journal on data semantics : JoDS}, number = {1-2}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {Heidelberg}, issn = {1861-2032}, doi = {10.1007/s13740-021-00120-3}, pages = {143 -- 163}, year = {2021}, abstract = {Business processes are often specified in descriptive or normative models. Both types of models should adhere to internal and external regulations, such as company guidelines or laws. Employing compliance checking techniques, it is possible to verify process models against rules. While traditionally compliance checking focuses on well-structured processes, we address case management scenarios. In case management, knowledge workers drive multi-variant and adaptive processes. Our contribution is based on the fragment-based case management approach, which splits a process into a set of fragments. The fragments are synchronized through shared data but can, otherwise, be dynamically instantiated and executed. We formalize case models using Petri nets. We demonstrate the formalization for design-time and run-time compliance checking and present a proof-of-concept implementation. The application of the implemented compliance checking approach to a use case exemplifies its effectiveness while designing a case model. The empirical evaluation on a set of case models for measuring the performance of the approach shows that rules can often be checked in less than a second.}, language = {en} } @article{BanoMichaelRumpeetal.2022, author = {Bano, Dorina and Michael, Judith and Rumpe, Bernhard and Varga, Simon and Weske, Mathias}, title = {Process-aware digital twin cockpit synthesis from event logs}, series = {Journal of computer languages}, volume = {70}, journal = {Journal of computer languages}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Amsterdam [u.a.]}, issn = {2590-1184}, doi = {10.1016/j.cola.2022.101121}, pages = {19}, year = {2022}, abstract = {The engineering of digital twins and their user interaction parts with explicated processes, namely processaware digital twin cockpits (PADTCs), is challenging due to the complexity of the systems and the need for information from different disciplines within the engineering process. Therefore, it is interesting to investigate how to facilitate their engineering by using already existing data, namely event logs, and reducing the number of manual steps for their engineering. Current research lacks systematic, automated approaches to derive process-aware digital twin cockpits even though some helpful techniques already exist in the areas of process mining and software engineering. Within this paper, we present a low-code development approach that reduces the amount of hand-written code needed and uses process mining techniques to derive PADTCs. We describe what models could be derived from event log data, which generative steps are needed for the engineering of PADTCs, and how process mining could be incorporated into the resulting application. This process is evaluated using the MIMIC III dataset for the creation of a PADTC prototype for an automated hospital transportation system. This approach can be used for early prototyping of PADTCs as it needs no hand-written code in the first place, but it still allows for the iterative evolvement of the application. This empowers domain experts to create their PADTC prototypes.}, language = {en} } @article{AndreeIhdeWeskeetal.2022, author = {Andree, Kerstin and Ihde, Sven and Weske, Mathias and Pufahl, Luise}, title = {An exception handling framework for case management}, series = {Software and Systems Modeling}, volume = {21}, journal = {Software and Systems Modeling}, number = {3}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {Heidelberg}, issn = {1619-1366}, doi = {10.1007/s10270-022-00993-3}, pages = {939 -- 962}, year = {2022}, abstract = {In order to achieve their business goals, organizations heavily rely on the operational excellence of their business processes. In traditional scenarios, business processes are usually well-structured, clearly specifying when and how certain tasks have to be executed. Flexible and knowledge-intensive processes are gathering momentum, where a knowledge worker drives the execution of a process case and determines the exact process path at runtime. In the case of an exception, the knowledge worker decides on an appropriate handling. While there is initial work on exception handling in well-structured business processes, exceptions in case management have not been sufficiently researched. This paper proposes an exception handling framework for stage-oriented case management languages, namely Guard Stage Milestone Model, Case Management Model and Notation, and Fragment-based Case Management. The effectiveness of the framework is evaluated with two real-world use cases showing that it covers all relevant exceptions and proposed handling strategies.}, language = {en} } @article{MendlingWebervanderAalstetal.2018, author = {Mendling, Jan and Weber, Ingo and van der Aalst, Wil and Brocke, Jan Vom and Cabanillas, Cristina and Daniel, Florian and Debois, Soren and Di Ciccio, Claudio and Dumas, Marlon and Dustdar, Schahram and Gal, Avigdor and Garcia-Banuelos, Luciano and Governatori, Guido and Hull, Richard and La Rosa, Marcello and Leopold, Henrik and Leymann, Frank and Recker, Jan and Reichert, Manfred and Reijers, Hajo A. and Rinderle-Ma, Stefanie and Solti, Andreas and Rosemann, Michael and Schulte, Stefan and Singh, Munindar P. and Slaats, Tijs and Staples, Mark and Weber, Barbara and Weidlich, Matthias and Weske, Mathias and Xu, Xiwei and Zhu, Liming}, title = {Blockchains for Business Process Management}, series = {ACM Transactions on Management Information Systems}, volume = {9}, journal = {ACM Transactions on Management Information Systems}, number = {1}, publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery}, address = {New York}, issn = {2158-656X}, doi = {10.1145/3183367}, pages = {1 -- 16}, year = {2018}, abstract = {Blockchain technology offers a sizable promise to rethink the way interorganizational business processes are managed because of its potential to realize execution without a central party serving as a single point of trust (and failure). To stimulate research on this promise and the limits thereof, in this article, we outline the challenges and opportunities of blockchain for business process management (BPM). We first reflect how blockchains could be used in the context of the established BPM lifecycle and second how they might become relevant beyond. We conclude our discourse with a summary of seven research directions for investigating the application of blockchain technology in the context of BPM.}, language = {en} } @article{YousfiWeske2019, author = {Yousfi, Alaaeddine and Weske, Mathias}, title = {Discovering commute patterns via process mining}, series = {Knowledge and Information Systems}, volume = {60}, journal = {Knowledge and Information Systems}, number = {2}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {London}, issn = {0219-1377}, doi = {10.1007/s10115-018-1255-1}, pages = {691 -- 713}, year = {2019}, abstract = {Ubiquitous computing has proven its relevance and efficiency in improving the user experience across a myriad of situations. It is now the ineluctable solution to keep pace with the ever-changing environments in which current systems operate. Despite the achievements of ubiquitous computing, this discipline is still overlooked in business process management. This is surprising, since many of today's challenges, in this domain, can be addressed by methods and techniques from ubiquitous computing, for instance user context and dynamic aspects of resource locations. This paper takes a first step to integrate methods and techniques from ubiquitous computing in business process management. To do so, we propose discovering commute patterns via process mining. Through our proposition, we can deduce the users' significant locations, routes, travel times and travel modes. This information can be a stepping-stone toward helping the business process management community embrace the latest achievements in ubiquitous computing, mainly in location-based service. To corroborate our claims, a user study was conducted. The significant places, routes, travel modes and commuting times of our test subjects were inferred with high accuracies. All in all, ubiquitous computing can enrich the processes with new capabilities that go beyond what has been established in business process management so far.}, language = {en} } @article{KunzeWeidlichWeske2015, author = {Kunze, Matthias and Weidlich, Matthias and Weske, Mathias}, title = {Querying process models by behavior inclusion}, series = {Software and systems modeling}, volume = {14}, journal = {Software and systems modeling}, number = {3}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {Heidelberg}, issn = {1619-1366}, doi = {10.1007/s10270-013-0389-6}, pages = {1105 -- 1125}, year = {2015}, abstract = {Business processes are vital to managing organizations as they sustain a company's competitiveness. Consequently, these organizations maintain collections of hundreds or thousands of process models for streamlining working procedures and facilitating process implementation. Yet, the management of large process model collections requires effective searching capabilities. Recent research focused on similarity search of process models, but querying process models is still a largely open topic. This article presents an approach to querying process models that takes a process example as input and discovers all models that allow replaying the behavior of the query. To this end, we provide a notion of behavioral inclusion that is based on trace semantics and abstraction. Additional to deciding a match, a closeness score is provided that describes how well the behavior of the query is represented in the model and can be used for ranking. The article introduces the formal foundations of the approach and shows how they are applied to querying large process model collections. An experimental evaluation has been conducted that confirms the suitability of the solution as well as its applicability and scalability in practice.}, language = {en} } @article{HerzbergMeyerWeske2015, author = {Herzberg, Nico and Meyer, Andreas and Weske, Mathias}, title = {Improving business process intelligence by observing object state transitions}, series = {Data \& knowledge engineering}, volume = {98}, journal = {Data \& knowledge engineering}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Amsterdam}, issn = {0169-023X}, doi = {10.1016/j.datak.2015.07.008}, pages = {144 -- 164}, year = {2015}, abstract = {During the execution of business processes several events happen that are recorded in the company's information systems. These events deliver insights into process executions so that process monitoring and analysis can be performed resulting, for instance, in prediction of upcoming process steps or the analysis of the run time of single steps. While event capturing is trivial when a process engine with integrated logging capabilities is used, manual process execution environments do not provide automatic logging of events, so that typically external devices, like bar code scanners, have to be used. As experience shows, these manual steps are error-prone and induce additional work. Therefore, we use object state transitions as additional monitoring information, so-called object state transition events. Based on these object state transition events, we reason about the enablement and termination of activities and provide the basis for process monitoring and analysis in terms of a large event log. In this paper, we present the concept to utilize information from these object state transition events for capturing process progress. Furthermore, we discuss a methodology to create the required design time artifacts that then are used for monitoring at run time. In a proof-of-concept implementation, we show how the design time and run time side work and prove applicability of the introduced concept of object state transition events. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.}, language = {en} } @article{MeyerPufahlBatoulisetal.2015, author = {Meyer, Andreas and Pufahl, Luise and Batoulis, Kimon and Fahland, Dirk and Weske, Mathias}, title = {Automating data exchange in process choreographies}, series = {Information systems}, volume = {53}, journal = {Information systems}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Oxford}, issn = {0306-4379}, doi = {10.1016/j.is.2015.03.008}, pages = {296 -- 329}, year = {2015}, abstract = {Communication between organizations is formalized as process choreographies in daily business. While the correct ordering of exchanged messages can be modeled and enacted with current choreography techniques, no approach exists to describe and automate the exchange of data between processes in a choreography using messages. This paper describes an entirely model-driven approach for BPMN introducing a few concepts that suffice to model data retrieval, data transformation, message exchange, and correlation four aspects of data exchange. For automation, this work utilizes a recent concept to enact data dependencies in internal processes. We present a modeling guideline to derive local process models from a given choreography; their operational semantics allows to correctly enact the entire choreography from the derived models only including the exchange of data. Targeting on successful interactions, we discuss means to ensure correct process choreography modeling. Finally, we implemented our approach by extending the camunda BPM platform with our approach and show its feasibility by realizing all service interaction patterns using only model-based concepts. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.}, language = {en} } @article{RoggeSoltiWeske2015, author = {Rogge-Solti, Andreas and Weske, Mathias}, title = {Prediction of business process durations using non-Markovian stochastic Petri nets}, series = {Information systems}, volume = {54}, journal = {Information systems}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Oxford}, issn = {0306-4379}, doi = {10.1016/j.is.2015.04.004}, pages = {1 -- 14}, year = {2015}, abstract = {Companies need to efficiently manage their business processes to deliver products and services in time. Therefore, they monitor the progress of individual cases to be able to timely detect undesired deviations and to react accordingly. For example, companies can decide to speed up process execution by raising alerts or by using additional resources, which increases the chance that a certain deadline or service level agreement can be met. Central to such process control is accurate prediction of the remaining time of a case and the estimation of the risk of missing a deadline. To achieve this goal, we use a specific kind of stochastic Petri nets that can capture arbitrary duration distributions. Thereby, we are able to achieve higher prediction accuracy than related approaches. Further, we evaluate the approach in comparison to state of the art approaches and show the potential of exploiting a so far untapped source of information: the elapsed time since the last observed event. Real-world case studies in the financial and logistics domain serve to illustrate and evaluate the approach presented. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.}, language = {en} } @article{PolyvyanyyGarciaBanuelosFahlandetal.2014, author = {Polyvyanyy, Artem and Garcia-Banuelos, Luciano and Fahland, Dirk and Weske, Mathias}, title = {Maximal structuring of acyclic process models}, series = {The computer journal : a publication of the British Computer Society}, volume = {57}, journal = {The computer journal : a publication of the British Computer Society}, number = {1}, publisher = {Oxford Univ. Press}, address = {Oxford}, issn = {0010-4620}, doi = {10.1093/comjnl/bxs126}, pages = {12 -- 35}, year = {2014}, abstract = {This article addresses the transformation of a process model with an arbitrary topology into an equivalent structured process model. In particular, this article studies the subclass of process models that have no equivalent well-structured representation but which, nevertheless, can be partially structured into their maximally-structured representation. The transformations are performed under a behavioral equivalence notion that preserves the observed concurrency of tasks in equivalent process models. The article gives a full characterization of the subclass of acyclic process models that have no equivalent well-structured representation, but do have an equivalent maximally-structured one, as well as proposes a complete structuring method. Together with our previous results, this article completes the solution of the process model structuring problem for the class of acyclic process models.}, language = {en} }