Evolutionary Multi-objective Optimisation of Business Processes

Abstract

This paper discusses the problem of business process optimisation within a multi-objective evolutionary framework. Business process optimisation is considered as the problem of constructing feasible business process designs with optimum attribute values such as duration and cost. The proposed approach involves the application of a series of Evolutionary Multi-objective Optimisation Algorithms (EMOAs) in an attempt to generate a series of diverse optimised business process designs for the same process requirements. The proposed optimisation framework introduces a quantitative representation of business processes involving two matrices one for capturing the process design and one for calculating and evaluating the process attributes. It also introduces an algorithm that checks the feasibility of each candidate solution (i.e. process design). The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed optimisation framework is capable of producing a satisfactory number of optimised design alternatives considering the problem complexity and high rate of infeasibility.