A Cost-centric Model for Context-aware Simulations of Business Processes
Vincenzo Cartelli, Giuseppe Di Modica, Orazio Tomarchio
2015
Abstract
Business process modeling is recognized as being one of the most crucial step in the management of the Business Process life cycle. Models which either are incorrect or do not accurately represent the desired process dynamics may seriously impair the achievement of an enterprise’s business goals. There is a growing interest towards simulative tools that take in input a process model and provide an estimate of the costs incurred by an hypothetical process execution. It is then of paramount importance that the input model be as accurate as possible, otherwise actual process execution costs may dramatically diverge from the estimates. In this paper we propose the definition of a comprehensive Business Process Model which inspires to the basic principles of the Activity Based Costing (ABC) analysis to provide a cost-centric perspective of the Business Processes to be executed. Emphasis is put on the need to represent the process Context, i.e., the resources processes need to consume and the environment where processes will execute. The introduced process context model is proposed as an extension to the BPMN standard. Further, we implemented a Business Process Simulator capable of simulating business processes defined according to the newly proposed model. A case study example was simulated and results are presented in the paper.
References
- Cartelli, V., Di Modica, G., and Tomarchio, O. (2014). A Resource-aware simulation tool for Business Processes. In ICEB 2014 - Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on e-Business, Vienna (Austria).
- Cooper, R. and Kaplan, R. S. (1992). Activity-based systems: Measuring the costs of resource usage. In Accounting Horizons, volume 6, pages 1-12.
- Dijkman, R. M., Dumas, M., and Ouyang, C. (2008). Semantics and analysis of business process models in BPMN. Information and Software Technology, 50(12):1281-1294.
- Gottschalk, F., Van der Aalst, W., Jansen-Vullers, M., and Verbeek, H. (2008). Protos2CPN: Using colored Petri nets for configuring and testing business processes.International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer, 10(1):95-110.
- Jansen-vullers, M. H. and Netjes, M. (2006). Business process simulation âA?¸S a tool survey. InIn Workshop and Tutorial on Practical Use of Coloured Petri Nets and the CPN.
- Jensen, K. (1996). Coloured Petri Nets: Basic Concepts, Analysis Methods and Practical Use. Springer-Verlag, London, UK.
- Kherbouche, O., Ahmad, A., and Basson, H. (2013). Using model checking to control the structural errors in bpmn models. In Research Challenges in Information Science (RCIS), 2013 IEEE Seventh International Conference on, pages 1-12.
- Koizumi, S. and Koyama, K. (2007). Workload-aware business process simulation with statistical service analysis and Timed Petri Net. In Proceedings - 2007 IEEE International Conference on Web Services, ICWS 2007, pages 70-77.
- OMG (2005). The UML Specification. http://www.omg.org/spec/UML/2.0/.
- OMG (2011). Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN 2.0). http://www.omg.org/spec/BPMN/2.0/.
- Porter, M. E. (1985). Competitive advantage: Creating and sustaining superior performance. Free Press.
- Scheer, A.-W. and Nüttgens, M. (2000). Aris architecture and reference models for business process management. In Business Process Management, Models, Techniques, and Empirical Studies, pages 376-389. Springer-Verlag.
- Van der Aalst, W. M. P. (2010). Business process simulation revisited. In Enterprise and Organizational Modeling and Simulation, volume 63, pages 1-14. SpringerVerlag.
- Van der Aalst, W. M. P., Nakatumba, J., Rozinat, A., and Russell, N. (2008). Business process simulation: How to get it right. In International Handbook on Business Process Management. Springer-Verlag.
- van der Aalst, W. M. P. and ter Hofstede, A. H. M. (2005). Yawl: Yet another workflow language. Information Systems, 30(4):245-275.
Paper Citation
in Harvard Style
Cartelli V., Di Modica G. and Tomarchio O. (2015). A Cost-centric Model for Context-aware Simulations of Business Processes . In Proceedings of the 7th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management - Volume 3: RDBPM, (IC3K 2015) ISBN 978-989-758-158-8, pages 303-314. DOI: 10.5220/0005637803030314
in Bibtex Style
@conference{rdbpm15,
author={Vincenzo Cartelli and Giuseppe Di Modica and Orazio Tomarchio},
title={A Cost-centric Model for Context-aware Simulations of Business Processes},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 7th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management - Volume 3: RDBPM, (IC3K 2015)},
year={2015},
pages={303-314},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0005637803030314},
isbn={978-989-758-158-8},
}
in EndNote Style
TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 7th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management - Volume 3: RDBPM, (IC3K 2015)
TI - A Cost-centric Model for Context-aware Simulations of Business Processes
SN - 978-989-758-158-8
AU - Cartelli V.
AU - Di Modica G.
AU - Tomarchio O.
PY - 2015
SP - 303
EP - 314
DO - 10.5220/0005637803030314