Isotactics as a foundation for alignment and abstraction of behavioral models

There are many use cases in business process management that require the comparison of behavioral models. For instance, verifying equivalence is the basis for assessing whether a technical workflow correctly implements a business process, or whether a process realization conforms to a reference process. This paper proposes an equivalence relation for models that describe behaviors based on the concurrency semantics of net theory and for which an alignment relation has been defined. This equivalence, called isotactics, preserves the level of concurrency of aligned operations. Furthermore, we elaborate on the conditions under which an alignment relation can be classified as an abstraction. Finally, we show that alignment relations induced by structural refinements of behavioral models are indeed behavioral abstractions

Supporting Domain Data Selection in Data-Enhanced Process Models

Process mining bridges the gap between process management and data science by discovering process models using event logs derived from real-world data. Besides mandatory event attributes, additional attributes can be part of an event representing domain data, such as human resources and costs. Data-enhanced process models provide a visualization of domain data associated to process activities directly in the process model, allowing to monitor the actual values of domain data in the form of event attribute aggregations. However, event logs can have so many attributes that it is difficult to decide, which one is of interest to observe throughout the process. This paper introduces three mechanisms to support domain data selection, allowing process analysts and domain experts to progressively reach their information of interest. We applied the proposed technique on the MIMIC-IV real-world data set on hospitalizations in the US

Bridging abstraction layers in process mining

While the maturity of process mining algorithms increases and more process mining tools enter the market, process mining projects still face the problem of different levels of abstraction when comparing events with modeled business activities. Current approaches for event log abstraction try to abstract from the events in an automated way that does not capture the required domain knowledge to fit business activities. This can lead to misinterpretation of discovered process models. We developed an approach that aims to abstract an event log to the same abstraction level that is needed by the business. We use domain knowledge extracted from existing process documentation to semi-automatically match events and activities. Our abstraction approach is able to deal with n:m relations between events and activities and also supports concurrency. We evaluated our approach in two case studies with a German IT outsourcing company

From BPMN process models to DMN decision models

The interplay between process and decision models plays a crucial role in business process management, as decisions may be based on running processes and affect process outcomes. Often process models include decisions that are encoded through process control flow structures and data flow elements, thus reducing process model maintainability. The Decision Model and Notation (DMN) was proposed to achieve separation of concerns and to possibly complement the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) for designing decisions related to process models. Nevertheless, deriving decision models from process models remains challenging, especially when the same data underlie both process and decision models. In this paper, we explore how and to which extent the data modeled in BPMN processes and used for decision-making may be represented in the corresponding DMN decision models. To this end, we identify a set of patterns that capture possible representations of data in BPMN processes and that can be used to guide the derivation of decision models related to existing process models. Throughout the paper we refer to real-world healthcare processes to show the applicability of the proposed approach

Matching events and activities by integrating behavioral aspects and label analysis

Nowadays, business processes are increasingly supported by IT services that produce massive amounts of event data during the execution of a process. These event data can be used to analyze the process using process mining techniques to discover the real process, measure conformance to a given process model, or to enhance existing models with performance information. Mapping the produced events to activities of a given process model is essential for conformance checking, annotation and understanding of process mining results. In order to accomplish this mapping with low manual effort, we developed a semi-automatic approach that maps events to activities using insights from behavioral analysis and label analysis. The approach extracts Declare constraints from both the log and the model to build matching constraints to efficiently reduce the number of possible mappings. These mappings are further reduced using techniques from natural language processing, which allow for a matching based on labels and external knowledge sources. The evaluation with synthetic and real-life data demonstrates the effectiveness of the approach and its robustness toward non-conforming execution logs

Ansätze zur Entwicklung von Workflow-basierten Anwendungssystemen:eine vergleichende Darstellung

Workflow-Management-Systeme werden entscheidende Impulse für die Gestaltung von Informationssystemen der nächsten Generation geben. Ähnlich wie Datenbank-Systeme heute werden Workflow-Systeme zukünftig als Basistechnologie in komplexen Informationssystemen verwendet werden. Sie ermöglichen eine geschäftsprozeßnahe Darstellung der betrieblichen Ablauflogik und die explizite und zentrale Abbildung dieser Geschäftsprozeßlogik mittels spezialisierter Softwarekomponenten im Gegensatz zu der heute üblichen impliziten Codierung der Prozeßlogik in Applikationen. Ansätze zur Entwicklung von Workflow-basierten Anwendungen sind somit von großem Interesse. Anhand eines Vorgehens-Meta-Modells stellt der Beitrag zunächst wichtige in der Literatur vorgeschlagene Vorgehensmodelle zur Entwicklung von Workflow-Anwendungen einheitlich und klassifizierend dar. Darauf aufbauend erfolgt eine vergleichende Einordnung der verschiedenen Ansätze anhand von Kriterien, die basierend auf dem Meta-Modell hergeleitet werden.<br/

Eine XML-basierte Systemarchitektur zur Realisierung flexibler Web-Applikationen

Nach einer kurzen Einleitung in die Thematik dieser Arbeit werden am Beispiel eines Lebensmittel-Lieferservices dessen Schwachstellen analysiert und Verbesserungspotenziale aufgezeigt. Nach der Diskussion eines allgemeinen Franchisekonzeptes und dessen Anwendung im Rahmen dieser Arbeit werden zunächst Anforderungen an eine adäquate Systemarchitektur ermittelt, die Lösungen für die Schwachstellen bietet und das Franchisekonzept unterstützt. Aus den Anforderungen wird eine Systemarchitektur entwickelt und eine spezielle technische Umsetzung dieser Architektur vorgestellt. Es wird insbesondere auf die Anforderung der Personalisierung eingegangen, deren Realisierung im konkreten Beispiel PESS näher beleuchtet und durch eine Beispielsitzung illustriert wird. Eine technische Dokumentation der Implementierung des Prototypen PESS findet sich im Anhang.<br/