Article
Geschäftsprozessmodellierung: Die ,,Killer-Applikation“ für Petrinetze
Seit ihrem Entwurf im Jahr 1962 sind Petrinetze in ganz unterschiedlichen Bereichen eingesetzt worden. Obwohl sie graphisch dargestellt werden und intuitiv einfach verständlich sind, haben Petrinetze eine formal eindeutige Semantik mit einer Vielzahl mathematischer Analysetechniken. Sie reichen vom Model Checking und der Strukturellen Analyse über das Process Mining bis zur Performanz-Analyse. Im Lauf der Zeit haben Petrinetze solide Grundlagen für die Forschung zum Geschäftsprozess-Management (BPM) beigetragen. Sie umfassen Methoden, Techniken und Werkzeuge um Geschäftsprozesse zu entwerfen, implementieren, verwalten und zu analysieren. Die etablierten Modellierungsmethoden und Workflow-Managementsysteme verwenden Token-basierte, von Petrinetzen entlehnte Beschreibungen. Nutzer moderner BPM-Analysetechniken wissen oft gar nicht, dass ihre Geschäfts- prozesse intern als Petrinetze repräsentiert werden. Dieser Beitrag zeigt die grundlegende Rolle von Petrinetzen im BPM.
Process mining techniques relate observed behavior to modeled behavior, e.g., the automatic discovery of a process model based on an event log. Process mining is not limited to process discovery and also includes conformance checking and model enhancement. Conformance checking techniques are used to diagnose the deviations of the observed behavior as recorded in the event log from some process model. Model enhancement allows to extend process models using additional perspectives, conformance and performance information. In recent years, BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation) 2.0 has become a de facto standard for modeling business processes in industry. This paper presents the BPMN support current in ProM. ProM is the most known and used open-source process mining framework. ProM’s functionalities of discovering, analyzing and enhancing BPMN models are discussed. Support of the BPMN 2.0 standard will help ProM users to bridge the gap between formal models (such as Petri nets, causal nets and others) and process models used by practitioners.
Process mining is a relatively new field of computer science which deals with process discovery and analysis based on event logs. In this work we consider the problem of discovering workflow nets with cancellation regions from event logs. Cancellations occur in the majority of real-life event logs. In spite of huge amount of process mining techniques little has been done on cancellation regions discovery. We show that the state-based region algorithm gives labeled Petri nets with overcomplicated control flow structure for logs with cancellations. We propose a novel method to discover cancellation regions from the transition systems built on event logs and show the way to construct equivalent workflow net with reset arcs to simplify the control flow structure.
This book constitutes the proceedings of the 37th International Conference on Application and Theory of Petri Nets and Concurrency, PETRI NETS 2016, held in Toruń, Poland, in June 2016. Petri Nets 2016 was co-located with the Application of Concurrency to System Design Conference, ACSD 2016. The 16 papers including 3 tool papers with 4 invited talks presented together in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 42 submissions. Papers presenting original research on application or theory of Petri nets, as well as contributions addressing topics relevant to the general field of distributed and concurrent systems are presented within this volume.
To large organizations, business intelligence (BI) promises the capability of collecting and analyzing internal and external data to generate knowledge and value, thus providing decision support at the strategic, tactical, and operational levels. BI is now impacted by the “Big Data” phenomena and the evolution of society and users. In particular, BI applications must cope with additional heterogeneous (often Web-based) sources, e.g., from social networks, blogs, competitors’, suppliers’, or distributors’ data, governmental or NGO-based analysis and papers, or from research publications. In addition, they must be able to provide their results also on mobile devices, taking into account location-based or time-based environmental data. The lectures held at the Third European Business Intelligence Summer School (eBISS), which are presented here in an extended and refined format, cover not only established BI and BPM technologies, but extend into innovative aspects that are important in this new environment and for novel applications, e.g., pattern and process mining, business semantics, Linked Open Data, and large-scale data management and analysis. Combining papers by leading researchers in the field, this volume equips the reader with the state-of-the-art background necessary for creating the future of BI. It also provides the reader with an excellent basis and many pointers for further research in this growing field.
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Since their inception in 1962, Petri nets have been used in a wide variety of application domains. Although Petri nets are graphical and easy to understand, they have formal semantics and allow for analysis techniques ranging from model checking and structural analysis to process mining and performance analysis. Over time Petri nets emerged as a solid foundation for Business Process Management (BPM) research. The BPM discipline develops methods, techniques, and tools to support the design, enactment, management, and analysis of operational business processes. Mainstream business process modeling notations and workflow management systems are using token-based semantics borrowed from Petri nets. Moreover, state-of-the-art BPM analysis techniques are using Petri nets as an internal representation. Users of BPM methods and tools are often not aware of this. This paper aims to unveil the seminal role of Petri nets in BPM.
Process-aware information systems (PAIS) enable developing models for interaction of processes, monitoring accuracy of their execution and checking if they interact with each other properly. PAIS can generate large data logs that contain the information about the interaction of processes in time. Studying PAIS logs with the purpose of data mining and modeling lies within the scope of Process Mining. There is a number of tools developed for Process Mining, including the most ubiquitous ProM, whose functionality is extended by plugins. To perform an object-aware experiment one has to sequentially run multiple plugins. This process becomes extremely time-consuming in the case of large-scale experiments involving a large number of plugins. The paper proposes a concept of DPMine/P language of process modeling and analysis to be implemented in ProM. The language under development aims at joining separate stages of the experiment into a single sequence, that is an experiment model. The implementation of the basic semantics of the language is done through the concept of blocks, ports, connectors and schemes. These items are discussed in detail in the paper, and examples of their use for specific tasks are presented ibid.
A model for organizing cargo transportation between two node stations connected by a railway line which contains a certain number of intermediate stations is considered. The movement of cargo is in one direction. Such a situation may occur, for example, if one of the node stations is located in a region which produce raw material for manufacturing industry located in another region, and there is another node station. The organization of freight traffic is performed by means of a number of technologies. These technologies determine the rules for taking on cargo at the initial node station, the rules of interaction between neighboring stations, as well as the rule of distribution of cargo to the final node stations. The process of cargo transportation is followed by the set rule of control. For such a model, one must determine possible modes of cargo transportation and describe their properties. This model is described by a finite-dimensional system of differential equations with nonlocal linear restrictions. The class of the solution satisfying nonlocal linear restrictions is extremely narrow. It results in the need for the “correct” extension of solutions of a system of differential equations to a class of quasi-solutions having the distinctive feature of gaps in a countable number of points. It was possible numerically using the Runge–Kutta method of the fourth order to build these quasi-solutions and determine their rate of growth. Let us note that in the technical plan the main complexity consisted in obtaining quasi-solutions satisfying the nonlocal linear restrictions. Furthermore, we investigated the dependence of quasi-solutions and, in particular, sizes of gaps (jumps) of solutions on a number of parameters of the model characterizing a rule of control, technologies for transportation of cargo and intensity of giving of cargo on a node station.
Event logs collected by modern information and technical systems usually contain enough data for automated process models discovery. A variety of algorithms was developed for process models discovery, conformance checking, log to model alignment, comparison of process models, etc., nevertheless a quick analysis of ad-hoc selected parts of a journal still have not get a full-fledged implementation. This paper describes an ROLAP-based method of multidimensional event logs storage for process mining. The result of the analysis of the journal is visualized as directed graph representing the union of all possible event sequences, ranked by their occurrence probability. Our implementation allows the analyst to discover process models for sublogs defined by ad-hoc selection of criteria and value of occurrence probability
Existing approaches suggest that IT strategy should be a reflection of business strategy. However, actually organisations do not often follow business strategy even if it is formally declared. In these conditions, IT strategy can be viewed not as a plan, but as an organisational shared view on the role of information systems. This approach generally reflects only a top-down perspective of IT strategy. So, it can be supplemented by a strategic behaviour pattern (i.e., more or less standard response to a changes that is formed as result of previous experience) to implement bottom-up approach. Two components that can help to establish effective reaction regarding new initiatives in IT are proposed here: model of IT-related decision making, and efficiency measurement metric to estimate maturity of business processes and appropriate IT. Usage of proposed tools is demonstrated in practical cases.
I give the explicit formula for the (set-theoretical) system of Resultants of m+1 homogeneous polynomials in n+1 variables