Generating multi-objective optimized configurable business process models

Abstract

The manual specification of imperative business process (BP) models can be very complex and time-consuming, potentially leading to non-optimized models or even errors. To support process analysts in the definition of these models, a method for generating optimized configurable BP models from a constraint-based specification by considering multiple objectives is described. A constraint-based specification typically allows for several different ways of executing it leading to several enactment plans which can, however, vary greatly in respect to how well different performance objective functions can be achieved. We therefore automatically generate different plans and select the ones which fit best the objectives of the company. The generated plans are then merged into an optimized configurable BP model to support the model expert in choosing the most appropriate plan depending on the importance of each objective at configuration time.