The business process modelling ontology

In this paper we describe the Business Process Modelling Ontology (BPMO), which is part of an approach to modelling business processes at the semantic level, integrating knowledge about the organisational context, workflow activities and Semantic Web Services. We harness knowledge representation and reasoning techniques so that business process workflows can: be exposed and shared through semantic descriptions; refer to semantically annotated data and services; incorporate heterogeneous data though semantic mappings; and be queried using a reasoner or inference engine. In this paper we describe our approach and evaluate BPMO through a use case

Business process models and entity life cycles

Tasks and business entities are the major constituents of business processes but they are not always considered equally important. The activity-centric approach and the artifact-oriented one have radically different visions. The former focuses on the control flow, i.e., on the representation of the precedence constraints between tasks, and considers the dataflow an add-on. The latter emphasizes the states of the business entities and defines the transitions between states in a declarative way that makes it difficult to figure out what the control flow is. This paper presents the ELBA notation whose purpose is to integrate those different visions by leveraging the dataflow. The dataflow defines the input and output entities of the tasks in process models. Entities flowing through tasks change their states and then a process model results from the combination of the life cycles of the entities managed by the process. Process models are complemented by information models that show the attributes and relationships of the entity types handled by the processes. Life cycles are intertwined in process models but they can be separated by means of an extraction technique that is illustrated in this paper with the help of two examples

Business process models and entity life cycles

Tasks and business entities are the major constituents of business processes but they are not always considered equally important. The activity-centric approach and the artifact-oriented one have radically different visions. The former focuses on the control flow, i.e., on the representation of the precedence constraints between tasks, and considers the dataflow an add-on. The latter emphasizes the states of the business entities and defines the transitions between states in a declarative way that makes it difficult to figure out what the control flow is. This paper presents the ELBA notation whose purpose is to integrate those different visions by leveraging the dataflow. The dataflow defines the input and output entities of the tasks in process models. Entities flowing through tasks change their states and then a process model results from the combination of the life cycles of the entities managed by the process. Process models are complemented by information models that show the attributes and relationships of the entity types handled by the processes. Life cycles are intertwined in process models but they can be separated by means of an extraction technique that is illustrated in this paper with the help of two examples

business process modeling based on entity life cycles

Abstract This paper presents an approach to business process modeling that aims to benefit from research on the artifact-oriented perspective and on case management. It draws the notion of entity life cycle from the former and the notion of hierarchical stage from the latter. The main purpose of the approach, which is called ELBA (Entity-Lifecyle Based Approach), is to leverage the notion of dataflow to coordinate the life cycles of the entities involved in a business process. For this reason, the approach takes advantage of a number of patterns, structural and functional, which are illustrated with the help of two examples, one related to the handling of papers submitted to conferences and the other concerning the many-to-many mapping between requisition orders and procurement ones in build-to-order processes

A comparative analysis of business process modelling techniques

Business process modelling is an increasingly popular research area for both organisations and academia due to its usefulness in facilitating human understanding and communication. Several modelling techniques have been proposed and used to capture the characteristics of business processes. However, available techniques view business processes from different perspectives and have different features and capabilities. Furthermore, to date limited guidelines exist for selecting appropriate modelling techniques based on the characteristics of the problem and its requirements. This paper presents a comparative analysis of some popular business process modelling techniques. The comparative framework is based on five criteria: flexibility, ease of use, understandability, simulation support and scope. The study highlights some of the major paradigmatic differences between the techniques. The proposed framework can serve as the basis for evaluating further modelling techniques and generating selection procedures

Business Process Modelling Languages in Designing Integrated Information System for Supply Chain Management

A business process model is very germane to the formation of an appropriate information system. For a marked infusion of business processes in the supply chain, the status quo regarding the processes must be totally understood and well secured. Business activities and sequence have to be well kept and properly coordinated by predicting business procedures process from diverse views. This study examines seven BPMLs Data Flow Diagram (DFD), Unified Modelling Language (UML), Business Process Modelling Notation(BPMN), Event Driven Process Chain (EPC), IDEF, Petri Net, and Role Activity Diagram (RAD). The submissions of this study are the subject of the Business Process Modelling Languages (BPMLs) in developing an integrated dissemination mechanism and classification of modelling tools