TY  - JOUR
A1  - Ihde, Sven
A1  - Pufahl, Luise
A1  - Völker, Maximilian
A1  - Goel, Asvin
A1  - Weske, Mathias
T1  - A framework for modeling and executing task
BT  - specific resource allocations in business processes
JF  - Computing : archives for informatics and numerical computation
N2  - As resources are valuable assets, organizations have to decide which resources to allocate to business process tasks in a way that the process is executed not only effectively but also efficiently. Traditional role-based resource allocation leads to effective process executions, since each task is performed by a resource that has the required skills and competencies to do so. However, the resulting allocations are typically not as efficient as they could be, since optimization techniques have yet to find their way in traditional business process management scenarios. On the other hand, operations research provides a rich set of analytical methods for supporting problem-specific decisions on resource allocation. This paper provides a novel framework for creating transparency on existing tasks and resources, supporting individualized allocations for each activity in a process, and the possibility to integrate problem-specific analytical methods of the operations research domain. To validate the framework, the paper reports on the design and prototypical implementation of a software architecture, which extends a traditional process engine with a dedicated resource management component. This component allows us to define specific resource allocation problems at design time, and it also facilitates optimized resource allocation at run time. The framework is evaluated using a real-world parcel delivery process. The evaluation shows that the quality of the allocation results increase significantly with a technique from operations research in contrast to the traditional applied rule-based approach.
KW  - Process Execution
KW  - Business Process Management
KW  - Resource Allocation
KW  - Resource Management
KW  - Activity-oriented Optimization
Y1  - 2022
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1007/s00607-022-01093-2
SN  - 0010-485X
SN  - 1436-5057
VL  - 104
SP  - 2405
EP  - 2429
PB  - Springer
CY  - Wien
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Haarmann, Stephan
A1  - Holfter, Adrian
A1  - Pufahl, Luise
A1  - Weske, Mathias
T1  - Formal framework for checking compliance of data-driven case management
JF  - Journal on data semantics : JoDS
N2  - 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.
KW  - Compliance checking
KW  - Case management
KW  - Model verification
KW  - Data-centric
KW  - processes
Y1  - 2021
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1007/s13740-021-00120-3
SN  - 1861-2032
SN  - 1861-2040
VL  - 10
IS  - 1-2
SP  - 143
EP  - 163
PB  - Springer
CY  - Heidelberg
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Andree, Kerstin
A1  - Ihde, Sven
A1  - Weske, Mathias
A1  - Pufahl, Luise
T1  - An exception handling framework for case management
JF  - Software and Systems Modeling
N2  - 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.
KW  - Exception handling
KW  - Knowledge-intensive processes
KW  - Flexible processes;
KW  - Case management
Y1  - 2022
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10270-022-00993-3
SN  - 1619-1366
SN  - 1619-1374
VL  - 21
IS  - 3
SP  - 939
EP  - 962
PB  - Springer
CY  - Heidelberg
ER  - 
TY  - GEN
A1  - Pufahl, Luise
A1  - Wong, Tsun Yin
A1  - Weske, Mathias
T1  - Design of an extensible BPMN process simulator
T2  - Business Process Management Workshops (BPM 2017)
N2  - Business process simulation is an important means for quantitative analysis of a business process and to compare different process alternatives. With the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) being the state-of-the-art language for the graphical representation of business processes, many existing process simulators support already the simulation of BPMN diagrams. However, they do not provide well-defined interfaces to integrate new concepts in the simulation environment. In this work, we present the design and architecture of a proof-of-concept implementation of an open and extensible BPMN process simulator. It also supports the simulation of multiple BPMN processes at a time and relies on the building blocks of the well-founded discrete event simulation. The extensibility is assured by a plug-in concept. Its feasibility is demonstrated by extensions supporting new BPMN concepts, such as the simulation of business rule activities referencing decision models and batch activities.
KW  - Business process simulation
KW  - Extensibility
KW  - BPMN
Y1  - 2018
SN  - 978-3-319-74030-0
SN  - 978-3-319-74029-4
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74030-0_62
SN  - 1865-1348
VL  - 308
SP  - 782
EP  - 795
PB  - Springer
CY  - Berlin
ER  - 
TY  - GEN
A1  - Gonzalez-Lopez, Fernanda
A1  - Pufahl, Luise
T1  - A Landscape for Case Models
T2  - Enterprise, Business-Process and Information Systems Modeling
N2  - Case Management is a paradigm to support knowledge-intensive processes. The different approaches developed for modeling these types of processes tend to result in scattered models due to the low abstraction level at which the inherently complex processes are therein represented. Thus, readability and understandability is more challenging than that of traditional process models. By reviewing existing proposals in the field of process overviews and case models, this paper extends a case modeling language - the fragment-based Case Management (fCM) language - with the goal of modeling knowledge-intensive processes from a higher abstraction level - to generate a so-called fCM landscape. This proposal is empirically evaluated via an online experiment. Results indicate that interpreting an fCM landscape might be more effective and efficient than interpreting an informationally equivalent case model.
KW  - Case Management
KW  - Process landscape
KW  - Process map
KW  - Process architecture
KW  - Process model
Y1  - 2019
SN  - 978-3-030-20618-5
SN  - 978-3-030-20617-8
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20618-5_6
SN  - 1865-1348
VL  - 352
SP  - 87
EP  - 102
PB  - Springer
CY  - Berlin
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Pufahl, Luise
A1  - Weske, Mathias
T1  - Batch activity: enhancing business process modeling and enactment with batch processing
JF  - Computing
N2  - Organizations strive for efficiency in their business processes by process improvement and automation. Business process management (BPM) supports these efforts by capturing business processes in process models serving as blueprint for a number of process instances. In BPM, process instances are typically considered running independently of each other. However, batch processing-the collectively execution of several instances at specific process activities-is a common phenomenon in operational processes to reduce cost or time. Currently, batch processing is organized manually or hard-coded in software. For allowing stakeholders to explicitly represent their batch configurations in process models and their automatic execution, this paper provides a concept for batch activities and describes the corresponding execution semantics. The batch activity concept is evaluated in a two-step approach: a prototypical implementation in an existing BPM System proves its feasibility. Additionally, batch activities are applied to different use cases in a simulated environment. Its application implies cost-savings when a suitable batch configuration is selected. The batch activity concept contributes to practice by allowing the specification of batch work in process models and their automatic execution, and to research by extending the existing process modeling concepts.
KW  - Batch activity
KW  - Batch processing
KW  - Business process models
KW  - Process Enactment
KW  - Colored Petri Net
Y1  - 2019
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1007/s00607-019-00717-4
SN  - 0010-485X
SN  - 1436-5057
VL  - 101
IS  - 12
SP  - 1909
EP  - 1933
PB  - Springer
CY  - Wien
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Meyer, Andreas
A1  - Pufahl, Luise
A1  - Batoulis, Kimon
A1  - Fahland, Dirk
A1  - Weske, Mathias
T1  - Automating data exchange in process choreographies
JF  - Information systems
N2  - 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.
KW  - Process modeling
KW  - Data modeling
KW  - Process choreographies
KW  - Data exchange
KW  - BPMN
KW  - SQL
Y1  - 2015
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.is.2015.03.008
SN  - 0306-4379
SN  - 1873-6076
VL  - 53
SP  - 296
EP  - 329
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Oxford
ER  -