Business Process Simulation Using Coloured Petri Nets
Name
Marek Zäuram
Abstract
Business process management plays an increasingly important role in the business world as it promotes effectiveness and efficiency in business operations. The simulation of business processes is one of the most versatile techniques for analyzing business processes quantitatively in order to identify and remove performance bottlenecks. The graphical representation of business process models has proven to be a very effective tool for presenting information to business stakeholders, including business analysts and system developers. Unfortunately most of the graphical business process modeling standards (including de facto standard BPMN) do not support attaching simulation information to the models. Major business process modelling tools and suites still provide ability to add simulation data and execute those models. However, only models designed with the tools themselves can be simulated and no extensibility mechanism is provided to add new features or change the pre-built simulation and reporting options. This paper proposes a meta-model for specifying simulation scenarios on the top of the BPMN meta-model. Also, the paper advocates using CPN Tools as an open and extensible business process model simulator. The paper provides an initial design of a transformation from BPMN process models to CPN models. The proposed design has been validated through one fully-worked case study.
Graduation Thesis language
English
Graduation Thesis type
Master - Information Technology
Supervisor(s)
Marlon Dumas
Defence year
2010