An Approach to Participatory Business Process Modeling: BPMN Model Generation Using Constraint Programming and Graph Composition
AGH University of Science and Technology, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Automatics, Computer Science and Biomedical Engineering, Department of Applied Computer Science, al. A. Mickiewicza 30, 30-059 Krakow, Poland
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Appl. Sci. 2018, 8(9), 1428; https://doi.org/10.3390/app8091428
Received: 13 July 2018
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Revised: 3 August 2018
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Accepted: 17 August 2018
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Published: 21 August 2018
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Applied Sciences Based on and Related to Computer and Control)
Designing business process models plays a vital role in business process management. The acquisition of such models may consume up to 60% of the project time. This time can be shortened using methods for the automatic or semi-automatic generation of process models. In this paper, we present a user-friendly method of business process composition. It uses a set of predefined constraints to generate a synthetic log of the process based on a simplified, unordered specification, which describes activities to be performed. Such a log can be used to generate a correct BPMN model. To achieve this, we propose the use of one of the existing process discovery algorithms or executing the activity graph-based composition algorithm, which generates the process model directly from the input log file. The proposed approach allows process participants to take part in process modeling. Moreover, it can be a support for business analysts or process designers in visualizing the workflow without the necessity to design the model explicitly in a graphical editor. The BPMN diagram is generated as an interchangeable XML file, which allows its further modification and adjustment. The included comparative analysis shows that our method is capable of generating process models characterized by high flow complexity and can support BPMN constructs, which are sufficient for about 70% of business cases.
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Keywords:
business process management; BPMN; process modeling; constraint programming; process planning; process graph
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Externally hosted supplementary file 1
Link: https://github.com/wpk1124/ProcessComposer_v2
Description: The web-based repository which contains supplementary materials related to the paper, such as: MiniZinc project for workflow trace identification, source code of the Java-based process composition application, BPMN models used for method evaluation, results of the performed comparative analysis.
MDPI and ACS Style
Wiśniewski, P.; Kluza, K.; Ligęza, A. An Approach to Participatory Business Process Modeling: BPMN Model Generation Using Constraint Programming and Graph Composition. Appl. Sci. 2018, 8, 1428. https://doi.org/10.3390/app8091428
AMA Style
Wiśniewski P, Kluza K, Ligęza A. An Approach to Participatory Business Process Modeling: BPMN Model Generation Using Constraint Programming and Graph Composition. Applied Sciences. 2018; 8(9):1428. https://doi.org/10.3390/app8091428
Chicago/Turabian StyleWiśniewski, Piotr, Krzysztof Kluza, and Antoni Ligęza. 2018. "An Approach to Participatory Business Process Modeling: BPMN Model Generation Using Constraint Programming and Graph Composition" Applied Sciences 8, no. 9: 1428. https://doi.org/10.3390/app8091428
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