Abstract
Business process simulation is an important means for quantitative analysis of a business process and to compare different process alternatives. With the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) being the state-of-the-art language for the graphical representation of business processes, many existing process simulators support already the simulation of BPMN diagrams. However, they do not provide well-defined interfaces to integrate new concepts in the simulation environment. In this work, we present the design and architecture of a proof-of-concept implementation of an open and extensible BPMN process simulator. It also supports the simulation of multiple BPMN processes at a time and relies on the building blocks of the well-founded discrete event simulation. The extensibility is assured by a plug-in concept. Its feasibility is demonstrated by extensions supporting new BPMN concepts, such as the simulation of business rule activities referencing decision models and batch activities.
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Its source code is available at https://github.com/bptlab/scylla.
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Pufahl, L., Wong, T.Y., Weske, M. (2018). Design of an Extensible BPMN Process Simulator. In: Teniente, E., Weidlich, M. (eds) Business Process Management Workshops. BPM 2017. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 308. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74030-0_62
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