BPMN-Based Business Process Modeling and Simulation

Abstract

A business process (BP) can be defined a set of tasks that are coordinately performed by an organization to achieve a business goal. M$S (Modeling & Simulation) techniques are widely and effectively adopted for BP analysis. A BP M$S approach is typically carried out by first building a simulation model (from a conceptual model of the BP under analysis), and then producing the software implementation of the simulation model, so to eventually execute the simulation code and get the results of interest. The standard language currently used to define BP models is the OMGs BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation). This paper presents a BPMN-based M$S approach that introduces a BPMN extension to specify BP simulation models as annotated BPMN models, and a domain-specific BP simulation language to specify and execute simulation model implementations, which can be seamlessly derived from annotated BPMN models by use of automated model transformations.