In: Petri Net Technology for Communication-Based Systems, pages 66-82. Volume 2472 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science / Hartmut Ehrig, Wolfgang Reisig, Grzegorz Rozenberg and Herbert Weber (Eds.) --- Springer-Verlag, November 2003.
Abstract: Supporting the everyday operation of business processes with the help of workflow management systems is a necessary prerequisite for many companies in order to stay competitive. Managing business processes comprises their modeling, analysis and execution support. Although investigated since the beginning of the nineties there is still a gap between the possibilities of the provided modeling languages, the expertise of the modeler and the requirements posed through the different steps within the management of business processes. In this paper we propose an iterative procedure model for the management of business processes which starts on an informal and more abstract level and leads the modeler to a formal description containing details of the implementation. We start the procedure using event driven process chains an informal but in practice widely accepted modeling language. Throughout the procedure the description is transformed in a formal specification based on Petri nets. The Petri net model is than used for analysis purposes and finally refined to serve as base for the coordination of the process at run time. The innovation of the proposed procedure is based on a pragmatic correctness interpretation of business process descriptions.
Keywords: Business Process Management; Event driven Process Chains; Petri nets.