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  -