Abstract
Modern day enterprises rely on streamlined business processes for their smooth operation. However, lot of these processes contain errors, many of which are control flow related, e.g., deadlock and lack of synchronization. This can provide hindrance to downstream analysis like correct simulation, code generation etc. For real-life process models other kind of errors are quite common, - these are syntactic errors which arise due to poor modeling practices. Detecting and identifying the location of occurrence of errors are equally important for correct modeling of business processes. We consider industrial business processes modeled in Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) and use graph-theoretic techniques and Petri net-based analyses to detect syntactic and control flow related errors respectively. Subsequently based on this, we diagnose different types of errors. We are further able to discover how error frequencies change with error depth and how they correlate with the size of the subprocesses and swim-lane interactions in the models. Such diagnostic details are vital for business process designers to detect, identify and rectify errors in their models.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Awad, A., Decker, G., Weske, M.: Efficient compliance checking using BPMN-Q and temporal logic. In: Dumas, M., Reichert, M., Shan, M.-C. (eds.) BPM 2008. LNCS, vol. 5240, pp. 326–341. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)
Cohen, J.: Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences. Lawrence Erlbaum, Hillsdale (1988)
Dijkman, R.M., Dumas, M., Ouyang, C.: Semantics and analysis of business process models in BPMN. Inf. Softw. Technol. 50(12), 1281–1294 (2008)
Fahland, D., Favre, C., Jobstmann, B., Koehler, J., Lohmann, N., Völzer, H., Wolf, K.: Analysis on demand: Instantaneous soundness checking of industrial business process models. Data Knowl. Eng. 70(5), 448–466 (2011); Also in Dayal, U., Eder, J., Koehler, J., Reijers, H.A. (eds.): BPM 2009. LNCS, vol. 5701. Springer, Heidelberg (2009)
Hauser, R., Friess, M., Küster, J.M., Vanhatalo, J.: Combining Analysis of Unstructured Workflows with Transformation to Structured Workflows. In: 10th IEEE International Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Conference, EDOC 2006 (2006)
Kiepuszewski, B., ter Hofstede, A., van der Aalst, W.: Fundamentals of control flow in workflows. Acta Informatica 39, 143–209 (2003)
Liu, R., Kumar, A.: An Analysis and Taxonomy of Unstructured Workflows. In: van der Aalst, W.M.P., Benatallah, B., Casati, F., Curbera, F. (eds.) BPM 2005. LNCS, vol. 3649, pp. 268–284. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)
Mendling, J., Neumann, G., van der Aalst, W.: Understanding the Occurrence of Errors in Process Models Based on Metrics. In: Meersman, R., Tari, Z. (eds.) OTM 2007, Part I. LNCS, vol. 4803, pp. 113–130. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)
Mendling, J., Verbeek, H.M.W., van Dongen, B.F., van der Aalst, W.M.P., Neumann, G.: Detection and prediction of errors in EPCs of the SAP reference model. Data Knowl. Eng. 64(1), 312–329 (2008)
B. P. M. Object Management Group and Notation. Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) Version 2.0. OMG Final Adopted Specification (2011), http://www.omg.org/spec/BPMN/2.0/
Roy, S., Bihary, S., Narayan Kumar, K.: Soundness checking of business processes using Petri Net-based techniques. Internal Report of Infosys (2012) (available on request)
Roy, S., Sajeev, A., Bihary, S., Ranjan, A.: An Empirical Study of Error Patterns in Industrial Business Process Models. IEEE Transactions of Service Computing (2013) (in press)
van der Aalst, W.M.P.: Verification of Workflow Nets. In: Azéma, P., Balbo, G. (eds.) ICATPN 1997. LNCS, vol. 1248, pp. 407–426. Springer, Heidelberg (1997)
van der Aalst, W.M.P.: The Application of Petri Nets to Workflow Management. Journal of Circuits, Systems, and Computers 8(1), 21–66 (1998)
van der Aalst, W.M.P., Hirnschall, A., Verbeek, H.M.W.: An Alternative Way to Analyze Workflow Graphs. In: Pidduck, A.B., Mylopoulos, J., Woo, C.C., Ozsu, M.T. (eds.) CAISE 2002. LNCS, vol. 2348, pp. 535–552. Springer, Heidelberg (2002)
Vanhatalo, J., Völzer, H., Koehler, J.: The Refined Process Structure Tree. In: Dumas, M., Reichert, M., Shan, M.-C. (eds.) BPM 2008. LNCS, vol. 5240, pp. 100–115. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)
Vanhatalo, J., Völzer, H., Leymann, F.: Faster and More Focused Control-Flow Analysis for Business Process Models Through SESE Decomposition. In: Krämer, B.J., Lin, K.-J., Narasimhan, P. (eds.) ICSOC 2007. LNCS, vol. 4749, pp. 43–55. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)
Verbeek, H.M.W., Basten, T., van der Aalst, W.M.P.: Diagnosing Workflow Processes Using Woflan. The Computer Journal 44 (2001)
Verbeek, H.M.W., van der Aalst, W.M.P.: Woflan 2.0 - A Petri-Net-Based Workflow Diagnosis Tool. In: Nielsen, M., Simpson, D. (eds.) ICATPN 2000. LNCS, vol. 1825, pp. 475–484. Springer, Heidelberg (2000)
Weber, I., Hoffman, J., Mendling, J.: Beyond Soundness: on the verification of semantic business process models. Distributed Parallel Databases 27, 271–343 (2010)
Wolf, K.: Generating Petri Net state spaces. In: Kleijn, J., Yakovlev, A. (eds.) ICATPN 2007. LNCS, vol. 4546, pp. 29–42. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this paper
Cite this paper
Roy, S., Sajeev, A.S.M., Sripathy, S. (2014). Diagnosing Industrial Business Processes: Early Experiences. In: Jones, C., Pihlajasaari, P., Sun, J. (eds) FM 2014: Formal Methods. FM 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8442. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06410-9_47
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06410-9_47
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-06409-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-06410-9
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)