USING BPMN AND TRACING FOR RAPID BUSINESS PROCESS
PROTOTYPING ENVIRONMENTS
Alessandro Ciaramella
1
, Mario G. C. A. Cimino
2
, Beatrice Lazzerini
2
and Francesco Marcelloni
2
1
IMT Lucca Institute for Advanced Studies, Piazza San Ponziano 6, 55100 Lucca, Italy
2
Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Informazione: Elettronica, Informatica, Telecomunicazioni
University of Pisa, Via Diotisalvi 2, 56122 Pisa, Italy
Keywords: Business Process Management, BPMN, Business Simulation, Traceability.
Abstract: Business Process (BP) analysis aims to investigate properties of BPs by performing simulation, diagnosis
and verification with the goal of supporting BP Management (BPM). In this paper, we propose a framework
for BPM that relies on the BP Modeling Notation (BPMN). More specifically, we first introduce a method
to deal with the BPM life cycle. Then, we discuss a platform to support this life cycle. The platform com-
prises three basic modules: a visual BPMN-based designer, a process tracing service, and a BP Manager for,
respectively, the design, configuration and execution phases of the BPM life cycle. The proposed frame-
work is particularly useful to perform business simulations such as what-if analysis, and to provide an effi-
cient integration support within the supply-chain. In this study, we also show some practical application of
this framework through a real-world experience on a leather firm, offering an environment for process
communication as well as for time and cost analysis.
1 INTRODUCTION
Business Process (BP) analysis aims to investigate
properties of BPs that are neither obvious nor trivial.
To this end, the term “analysis” is used with a rather
broad meaning, including simulation and diagnosis,
verification and performance analysis (Van der Aalst
et al., 2003). Process simulation facilitates process
diagnosis since, by simulating real-world cases, do-
main experts can verify whether process models
work properly and possibly propose modifications of
the original process models. Further, if BP models
are expressed in process languages with clear se-
mantics, their structural properties can be analyzed.
For example, we could verify whether certain activi-
ties of the processes can never be activated and fix
the modeling mistake. While basic structural proper-
ties of process models have been studied for some
time, very few software products actually support
them. Only recently, some tools for BP management
have been proposed with the aim of managing busi-
ness processes using methods, techniques, and soft-
ware to design, control, and analyze operational
processes (Van der Aalst et al., 2003).
As Smith and Fingar (2003) pointed out, the
enabler of a good BPM is an open process-modeling
language standard, which allows interoperability and
ease of use. Unfortunately, at present, there does not
exist a widely accepted and adopted standard (Wang
et al., 2006), but there are several language propos-
als to get an abstract representation of business
processes. For instance, UML 2.0 Activity Diagram
(Object Management Group, 2008, UML) allows a
high-level representation of dynamic system beha-
vior, which is well suitable for model business
processes under a control-flow perspective. This
kind of diagrams, however, is extremely limited in
capturing organizational aspects, or in managing
resource allocation and distribution (Russel et al.,
2006).
Petri net-based languages have interesting prop-
erties, such as the use of formal semantics, the pres-
ence of analysis techniques, and a state-based con-
trol flow. Some problems, however, arise in terms of
expressiveness, because these languages are unable
to represent patterns involving multiple partners,
coordination and cancellation (Van der Aalst and
Hofstede, 2002).
Event-Driven Process Chains (EPCs) (Scheer,
1999) are a method for representation of BP models
206
Ciaramella A., G. C. A. Cimino M., Lazzerini B. and Marcelloni F. (2009).
USING BPMN AND TRACING FOR RAPID BUSINESS PROCESS PROTOTYPING ENVIRONMENTS.
In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Information Systems Analysis and Specification, pages
206-212
DOI: 10.5220/0002005002060212
Copyright
c
SciTePress
focused on supporting data and model interchange.
They have been proposed for allowing business
managers to easily understand and use BPs. The
main drawback of the EPCs is the lack of a support
for information management and organizational as-
pects (List and Korheer, 2006).
Integrated DEFinition (IDEF) modeling languag-
es have been conceived for use in system engineer-
ing as a standard method to document and analyze
processes. IDEF adopts different methods which
have been introduced in subsequent phases in the
standard. Each method refers to specific modeling
aspects. In order to provide a complete description
of the behavior of a system, these different methods
should be integrated. The use and integration of
these methods require consistency between different
levels of modeling which could be difficult to main-
tain (Noran, 2005).
BP Modeling Notation (BPMN) (Object Man-
agement Group, 2008, BPMN) has been introduced
in 2004 by the BP Management Initiative
(BPMI.org) and has been adopted as a standard by
the Object Management Group (OMG) in 2005. The
primary goal of BPMN is to provide a notation that
is readily understandable by all business stakehold-
ers (White, 2004). BPMN is also supported with an
internal model that enables the generation of execut-
able programs in Web Service Business Process Ex-
ecution Language (WSBPEL) (OASIS, 2007), i.e., a
language for specifying BP behavior based on web
services. Thus, BPMN represents a standardized
bridge for the gap between the business process de-
sign and implementation. Furthermore, BPMN pro-
vides support to represent the most common control-
flow modeling requirements that occur when defin-
ing process models (Wohed et al., 2006). In this
study, BPMN is considered as a reference standard
in BPM.
In this paper, we introduce a framework based on
BPMN for managing business processes. The
framework proposes a method to deal with the BPM
life cycle and a platform to support the method along
the different phases of the life cycle. Finally, we
describe the application of the framework to a real-
case in the leather supply chain.
The paper is structured as follows. Section 2 illu-
strates the most important phases of the proposed
method. Section 3 is devoted to an introduction of
the BPMN standard as a visual language. Section 4
concerns the correspondence between BPMN and
WSBPEL. The proposed BPM platform is presented
in Section 5, whereas Section 6 describes the appli-
cation of the framework to two real example
processes in the leather supply chain.
2 BPM LIFE CYCLE
A BPM life cycle describes an approach that com-
prises various phases in support of operational busi-
ness processes (Van der Aalst et al., 2003). There is
a variety of BPM approaches in the literature
(Weske et al., 2004). In this context, BPMN is a core
enabler of an emerging approach aimed at unifying
previously distinct disciplines, such as process mod-
eling, simulation, workflow and enterprise integra-
tion, so as to propose a single standard paradigm. In
this paper, we consider the BPM life cycle proposed
by Van der Aalst et al. (2003) and Weske et al.
(2004). The cycle consists of four phases. In the first
phase, i.e., the design phase, processes are (re-
)designed. In the configuration phase, designs are
implemented by configuring a process-aware infor-
mation system (e.g., a workflow management sys-
tem). After configuration, the enactment phase starts
when the operational business processes are ex-
ecuted using the information system. In the diagno-
sis phase, the operational processes are analyzed to
identify problems and to find possible improve-
ments. In the following, the union of the enactment
and the diagnosis phases is called execution phase.
In this paper, we focus on a specific implementa-
tion of this life cycle, which relies on the BPMN
standard. Figure 1 describes this implementation.
First, we model the business processes by using a
BPMN designer tool which allows defining the
processes in a visual and understandable manner. In
this phase, called modeling, a set of parameters (e.g.,
duration time and/or quality features) is also asso-
ciated by the designer with each activity in the mod-
el. In the second phase, i.e., coding, the models con-
ceived by means of BPMN are translated into a
business execution language, i.e., WSBPEL 2.0, in
order to obtain an executable set of components
representing the modeled business processes. Third,
in the tuning
Figure 1: A BPM life cycle implementation.
phase, the business activities are configured by ex-
tracting a set of values for the previously selected
parameters from a process tracing service. Fourth, in
the deployment phase, the resulting components are
deployed in a BP server, which is based on web ser-
vices technology. Finally, in the last phase, i.e., si-
mulation, simulations are performed (e.g., what-if
USING BPMN AND TRACING FOR RAPID BUSINESS PROCESS PROTOTYPING ENVIRONMENTS
207
analysis for detailed cost and time estimations). In
this phase, thanks to the use of web services-based
components, a communication infrastructure be-
tween supply-chain actors can be also automatically
derived. As shown in Figure 1, the overall method
can be executed iteratively, in order to achieve a
continuous improvement of the BP analysis.
3 BPMN AS A VISUAL
LANGUAGE FOR PROCESSES
The importance of conceptual modeling is largely
recognized in the literature (Wand and Weber,
2002). Modeling is a learning process, where busi-
ness analysts can make clear requirements, boost the
domain knowledge and express rough solutions.
Visual models act as communication channels be-
tween business managers and technicians, and pro-
vide the necessary documentation to manage post-
project activities. BPMN is an OMG effort to pro-
vide businesses with an operational standard to vi-
sually model business processes and their relation-
ships.
To describe business processes, BPMN offers the
Business Process Diagram (BPD), which is very
similar to the UML Activity Diagram. A BPD con-
sists of four basic categories of elements (Object
Management Group, 2008, BPMN): Flow Objects,
Connecting Objects, Swimlanes, and Artifacts as
shown in Figure 2. Key concepts are briefly defined
in the following. Events are representations of some-
thing that can happen during the BP; business flow is
activated by a start event and terminated by an end
event, while intermediate events can occur anywhere
within the flow. Business activities can be atomic
(tasks) or compound (processes, as connection of
tasks); gateways represent decision points to control
the business flow. Data objects model any informa-
Figure 2: Basic elements in BPMN: (a) flow objects, (b)
artifacts, (c) connecting objects, and (d) swimlanes.
tion required or provided by activities, whereas
groups allow logical clustering of activities. Annota-
tions are exploited to add comments or text informa-
tion to diagrams. Connecting objects connect flow
objects together: sequence flows show the order of
execution of activities in the BP, message flows
represent messages exchanged between business
entities, and associations highlight inputs and out-
puts of activities. A pool represents a participant in a
BP and lanes allow detailed categorization of activi-
ties within a pool. A process can be depicted by
means of another BPD. This allows to represent
more exhaustive business descriptions, maintaining
the overall view of the process flow.
Figure 3 shows the process for manufacturing a
bag in a real leather firm. Figure 3.a outlines the
macro processes, from the bag design to its ship-
ment. Figure 3.b represents a drill down through the
“check and ship out” sub-process, where semi-
finished products originated from the “assemble”
sub-process are checked against quality. The arrow
within a circle (Off-Page connector) denotes a link
between pieces of the diagram. If the products are
good, they are packed and shipped out; otherwise
proper corrective actions are triggered to handle the
error (the error event is represented by a flash of
lighting). Finally, Figure 3.c shows the expansion of
the “check product” sub-process: in the first gate-
way, features of the product are compared with spe-
cifications and quality plan. If the product is com-
pliant, it can be packed and shipped out. Otherwise,
the product is analyzed so as to determine the causes
of the fail and examine the possibility to remove the
error. If the error is judged removable, then the “re-
working” sub-process is fired, otherwise the product
is dispatched to the “reject” sub-process.
4 FROM BPMN TO BPEL
Similar to the abstraction and automation goals of
UML 2.0, the strength of BPMN resides in two im-
portant aspects. First, its simplicity, which is due to
the abstraction level provided by the standard.
Second, the possibility of being translated (in an
automatic manner) into a business execution lan-
guage, and then to generate a machine-readable pro-
totype of business processes. BPMN was developed
with a solid mathematical foundation provided by
exploiting process calculus theory (White, 2004).
This theory is an essential requirement for a good
business process modeling language, in order to au-
tomate execution and to easily provide proofs of
general consistency properties, as it is widely recog-
ICEIS 2009 - International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems
208
Figure 3: Excerpt of the business process flow representation in BPMN, for the production of a bag. (a) Overall process
flow; (b) Drill down through the “check and ship out” process; (c) Drill down through the “check product” process.
nized in the literature (Puhlumann, 2007, and
Förster, 2003). Smith and Fingar (2003) highlighted
that BPMN is the equivalent graphical visual nota-
tion of BPML, the BP Modeling Language devel-
oped by BPMI. BPML provides “the reliability, co-
herence and simplicity needed for users to be able to
manipulate processes with great confidence” (Smith
and Fingar, 2003). Hence, BPMN was conceived
with the specific intention of creating a bridge from
the business perspective to the technical perspective
about processes (White, 2004).
The use of BPML has been deprecated in favor of
WSBPEL, the OASIS standard to specify business
process behavior orchestrating web services. How-
ever, regardless of BPMN developers declarations
(White, 2004), the BPMN-to-WSBPEL mapping is
not seamless, as some researchers pointed out (e.g.
Oyuang et al., 2006), basically due to the different
nature of these languages: graph-oriented the former,
block-based the latter.
An example of BPMN-to-BPEL coding is shown
in Figure 4, where the process flow goes through a
decision point (a gateway). First, the “receive evalu-
ation” process exchanges messages with the “cus-
tomer evaluation” one, and hence the gateway is
fired. If the sample has to be modified, then the
“analyze deficiencies” process is executed. Other-
wise, the “create component list” process is ex-
ecuted.
5 THE BUSINESS PROCESS
MANAGEMENT PLATFORM
Weske et al. (2004) define a BPM System as “a ge-
neric software system that is driven by explicit
process designs to enact and manage operational
business processes”. There are several BPM systems
that help business analysts improve their work: BPM
market is not well established today, and there is not
a predominant vendor.
A recent survey from BPTrends (Harmon and Wolf,
2008) lists 22 BPMS Suites used in organizations,
like IBM WebSphere BPM, Oracle BPEL Process
Manager, SAP NetWeaver, and so forth. Moreover,
two-thirds of interviewed people have declared to
adopt graphics modeling tools (e.g. Microsoft Visio,
a pure drawing tool) to manage and document busi-
ness processes in their own company. In particular,
we experienced, by using different tools, that the
robustness of the BPMN-to-BPEL coding module is
crucial for the effectiveness of the overall BPM
framework. For instance, in our experimental stu-
dies, we tested the Visual Paradigm solution for
BPM, i.e., Business Process Visual Architect (BP-
VA). Although commercial declarations (Visual
Paradigm, 2007) boast to provide extensive support
for BPMN, we realized that in BP-VA the following
constructs are not immediately translated: (i) an
“end” event immediately after a task or a gateway;
(ii) tasks immediately after a macro-process; (iii) a
task that receives and sends messages at the same
USING BPMN AND TRACING FOR RAPID BUSINESS PROCESS PROTOTYPING ENVIRONMENTS
209
time; (iv) until loops, where condition is tested after
loop has executed.
The current version of the proposed framework uses
the BPM solution proposed by Intalio
(www.intalio.com). It is fully compliant with the
BPMN standard: it is an open source project and is a
very user-friendly tool to support BPM, making it
suitable also for non-technical users.
Furthermore, Intalio offers a BPM platform to
execute and simulate prototypes of business
processes modeled with BPMN and translated into a
BPEL specification.
<bpel:if>
<bpel:condition>1 =$evaluation...
</bpel:condition>
<bpel:sequence>
<bpel:empty
bpmn:label="Analyze deficiencies"
bpmn:id="..." />
</bpel:sequence>
<bpel:else>
<bpel:sequence>
<bpel:empty
bpmn:label="Create Component list"
bpmn:id="..." />
</bpel:sequence>
</bpel:else>
</bpel:if>
Figure 4: Example of BPMN-to-BPEL coding.
5.1 The Auto-configuration Phase
One of the purposes of our approach is to perform
analytical BP simulations. To this aim, a set of pa-
rameters can be associated with each activity. Two
examples of these parameters are the duration time
and types of defects. Quality requirements often play
a crucial role in modern BPM, and thus they deserve
particular attention in the corresponding traceability
systems as well. The ISO 9000 standard defines
quality as the totality of features and characteristics
of a product or service that bear its ability to satisfy
stated or implied needs. To meet quality require-
ments, we used a traceability framework developed
in Bechini et al. (2008). This framework models an
abstract class QualityFeature, which includes a de-
scription of the feature itself and a collection of me-
thods to set and retrieve feature values. Values can
be either categorical or numerical. This class organi-
zation allows dealing uniformly with different quali-
ty features.
Once modeled, each quality feature can be asso-
ciated with a corresponding parameter of an activity,
and this parameter can be fulfilled with a concrete
value derived from the traceability system. For in-
stance, the duration time can be derived by calculat-
ing the average time of the corresponding traced
activity.
5.2 Deployment Process
After being modeled, business processes can be au-
tomatically deployed in the Intalio BPM platform.
Several artifacts are generated during this step: the
BPEL code representing the overall process, some
WSDL files to model interactions with other busi-
ness actors or to describe external services, and other
files specific to Intalio.
In particular, the web interfaces related to busi-
ness processes are managed in the deployment
process by suitable Web forms named XForms
(W3C, 2004) inside the BPMS Web User Interface.
An XForm is an evolution of XHTML Web form,
based on the Model-View-Controller paradigm
(W3C, 2004). Users exploit XForms to perform
message exchange with the system or other business
actors, or to choose alternatives in decision points.
In our case study, we created several forms to allow
business participants to have the control in making
decisions at the correct time, in order to lead
processes. For instance, an XForm can show the
prices of the ordered item and ask for its acceptance,
thus letting the user decide on the process flow.
5.3 Simulation and Execution Phase
Simulation is a precious tool to understand how a
process behaves, to measure its performance, and to
carry out cost-effective business analysis (Tumay,
1996). Kellner et al. (1999) list six reasons to per-
form simulations: strategic management, planning,
control and operational management, process im-
provement and technology adoption, understanding,
and training and learning.
Simulation provides a safe environment to test
the efficiency and effectiveness of the modeled
process, before enacting it in real business. Changes
and enhancements are easy to implement directly on
the process model, restarting our BPM framework.
Further, in our platform, once the deployment
step is completed, information business process can
be directly executed on the Intalio BPMS Web User
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210
Interface, which represents an interaction context for
business actors communication. In this way, a robust
integration within the supply chain is achieved. For
instance, a customer can order the accurate quantity
of required goods, and a supplier can assure a punc-
tual shipment. This information exchange is auto-
matically connected to the business status.
6 CASE STUDY
We applied our proposed framework to a real leather
firm to have concrete insights about its processes
and to enhance decision making activities. In this
section, we will show two examples concerning the
improvement of outsourcer selection, and the analy-
sis of the value stream in the supply chain. Typical-
ly, the outsourcers are used to manufacture the bag
after cutting the leather.
As regards the outsourcer selection, our frame-
work is able to trace the most important parameters
to support this decision. In particular, for a set of
crucial activities, we collected information about
lead time, variance of lead time, maximum observed
delay, price, percentage of faults (or defects), and
average delay in signaling defects. Comparing the
same parameters for each outsourcer, executive
managers can decide the outsourcer which best fits
specific requirements of a job order. Furthermore,
the process tracing service has allowed managers to
know the exact time requirements for certain phases
of the manufacturing process. Table 1 shows ga-
thered information concerning the production of a
high quality bag. The considered activities sweep
from the processing of the leather, through the cut of
the bag elements, to the assembly and packing of the
end product. Depending on the chosen outsourcer,
duration times and costs can change accordingly.
Furthermore, other quality parameters have been
modeled to better cope with the outsourcer selection
problem. In particular percentage of defects and av-
erage delay in signaling defects have been traced in
order to give executive managers the chance to se-
lect the suitable outsourcer.
As regards the second application, the analysis of
the value streams concerns the characterization of
activities into two classes: value-added and non-
value-added activities. This allows determining
possible causes of waste and reducing total lead time
within the supply chain. Using the proposed frame-
work, each activity has been classified and an execu-
tion time has been associated with it. We grouped all
activities of our case study into manufacturing, wa-
rehousing, waiting, transport and inspection
processes. For each process, we traced lead times as
shown in Table 2. This information has allowed
management to investigate causes of waste (e.g.,
waste of time for waiting, waste of space for ware-
housing, waste of workforce for transport) and to
identify improvement areas.
Table 1: Gathered information from process tracing ser-
vice concerning the production of a high quality bag.
Activity Lead
time
(min.)
Δ lead
time
(min.)
Price per
minute
(Euros)
Δ
price
(Euros)
Cutting 25 ± 3 0.32 ± 0.05
Predisposition 28 ± 3 0.25 ± 0.05
Assembly 135 ± 10 0.29 ± 0.03
Packing 11 ± 2 0.28 ± 0.02
Table 2: Lead time for each process.
Activity Time (min.) Percentage
Manufacturing 2880 53.51 %
Warehousing 1920 35.67 %
Waiting 480 8.92 %
Transport 95 1.77 %
Inspection 7 0.13 %
Total 5382 100.00 %
7 CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, we have proposed a framework to per-
form business process analysis and to provide an
effective integration between supply-chain actors.
The framework relies on the BPMN to model
processes in a manner that is both human and ma-
chine readable, on the basis of visual BP diagrams
and BPEL code, respectively.
We have also developed a supporting platform
which is mainly composed of a visual designer, a
process tracing service, and a business process serv-
er. The framework has been experienced and docu-
mented on a real leather firm, considering two busi-
ness cases: the improvement of outsourcer selection,
and the analysis of the value stream in the supply
chain.
A critical evaluation of the proposed system, in-
clusive of future improvements, will be based on the
results and issues raised by the partners that are ex-
periencing the system. As first result, the system
should allow a significant reduction of the time and
effort needed to evaluate the real production cost.
Then, the system should permit to significantly re-
duce the problems caused by delays in signaling
defects. The most common consequence of these
delays is a late shipment, which is very negative in
fashion sector. Finally, the system should guarantee
USING BPMN AND TRACING FOR RAPID BUSINESS PROCESS PROTOTYPING ENVIRONMENTS
211
an increase in supply chain integration by control-
ling possible defects and limiting their effects.
On the other hand, the lack of general metrics to
assess the quality of the modeled BPs and of the
whole BPM workflow (Vanderfeesten et. al. 2007)
does not allow comparing our system with similar
approaches.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work was supported by the Tuscany Region
under the DOCUP 2000-2006, Measure 2.8, Action
2.8.4, project "Innovazione, progettazione, qualità,
tracciabilità per il sistema moda" and the DOCUP
2000-2006, Measure 1.7, Action 1.7.1, project
"Tracce sulla pelle". The authors would like to thank
the Consorzio Centopercento Italiano and A.S.S.A.
Società Cooperativa Consortile for the valuable help
in modeling the processes used as example in the
paper.
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