A Novel Approach for Business Process Model Matching Using Genetic Algorithms

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Mostefai Abdelkader ◽  
Ignacio García Rodríguez de Guzmán
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Algorithms ◽  
Business Process ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Optimization Problem ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Similarity Metrics ◽  
Model Matching ◽  
Matching Problem ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
The One

This paper formulates the process model matching problem as an optimization problem and presents a heuristic approach based on genetic algorithms for computing a good enough alignment. An alignment is a set of not overlapping correspondences (i.e., pairs) between two process models(i.e., BP) and each correspondence is a pair of two sets of activities that represent the same behavior. The first set belongs to a source BP and the second set to a target BP. The proposed approach computes the solution by searching, over all possible alignments, the one that maximizes the intra-pairs cohesion while minimizing inter-pairs coupling. Cohesion of pairs and coupling between them is assessed using a proposed heuristic that combines syntactic and semantic similarity metrics. The proposed approach was evaluated on three well-known datasets. The results of the experiment showed that the approach has the potential to match business process models effectively.

A Novel Approach for Business Process Model Matching Using Genetic Algorithms

2021 ◽  
pp. 1053-1073
Author(s):  
Mostefai Abdelkader ◽  
Ignacio García Rodríguez de Guzmán
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Algorithms ◽  
Business Process ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Business Process Model ◽  
Model Matching ◽  
Matching Problem ◽  
Business Process Models ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
The One

This paper formulates the process model matching problem as an optimization problem and presents a heuristic approach based on genetic algorithms for computing a good enough alignment. An alignment is a set of not overlapping correspondences (i.e., pairs) between two process models(i.e., BP) and each correspondence is a pair of two sets of activities that represent the same behavior. The first set belongs to a source BP and the second set to a target BP. The proposed approach computes the solution by searching, over all possible alignments, the one that maximizes the intra-pairs cohesion while minimizing inter-pairs coupling. Cohesion of pairs and coupling between them is assessed using a proposed heuristic that combines syntactic and semantic similarity metrics. The proposed approach was evaluated on three well-known datasets. The results of the experiment showed that the approach has the potential to match business process models effectively.

Business Semantics Alignment for Business Process Model Integration

2013 ◽  
pp. 91-112
Author(s):  
Janina Fengel
Keyword(s):  
Business Process ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Modeling Languages ◽  
Semantic Matching ◽  
Domain Experts ◽  
Business Operations ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Support Domain ◽  
Processing Techniques

Business process modeling has become an accepted means for designing and describing business operations. However, due to dissimilar utilization of modeling languages and, even more importantly, the natural language for labeling model elements, models can differ. As a result, comparisons are a non-trivial task that is presently to be performed manually. Thereby, one of the major challenges is the alignment of the business semantics contained, which is an indispensable pre-requisite for structural comparisons. For easing this workload, the authors present a novel approach for aligning business process models semantically in an automated manner. Semantic matching is enabled through a combination of ontology matching and information linguistics processing techniques. This provides for a heuristic to support domain experts in identifying similarities or discrepancies.

Improving Effectiveness of Process Model Matchers Using Wordnet Glosses

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Mostefai Abdelkader
Keyword(s):  
Business Process ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Business Process Management ◽  
Process Management ◽  
Cosine Similarity ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Model Matching ◽  
Similarity Metric

Process model matching is a key activity in many business process management tasks. It is an activity that consists of detecting an alignment between process models by finding similar activities in two process models. This article proposes a method based on WordNet glosses to improve the effectiveness of process model matchers. The proposed method is composed of three steps. In the first step, all activities of the two BPs are extracted. Second, activity labels are expanded using word glosses and finally, similar activities are detected using the cosine similarity metric. Two experiments were conducted on well-known datasets to validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. In the first one, an alignment is computed using the cosine similarity metric only and without a process of expansion. While, in the second experiment, the cosine similarity metric is applied to the expanded activities using glosses. The results of the experiments were promising and show that expanding activities using WordNet glosses improves the effectiveness of process model matchers.

Power Transmission Analysis in Wireless Sensor Networks Using Data Aggregation Techniques

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 37-53
Author(s):  
Hradesh Kumar ◽  
Pradeep Kumar Singh
Keyword(s):  
Business Process ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Process Management ◽  
Power Transmission ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Model Matching ◽  
Matching Process ◽  
Effective Manner ◽  
Aggregation Techniques ◽  
Using Data

The process model matching is a critical step in many business process management activities. Process model matching consists of finding correspondences between activities of process models. This article presents a method for matching process model. The proposed method matches (i.e., aligns) two process models in three sequential steps. First, activities in the two process models are extracted. Second, the extracted activities are expanded using synonyms, hypernyms, and hyponyms of its composing words. These synonyms, hypernyms, and hyponyms are extracted from the WordNet thesaurus. Third, the expanded activities are compared using the Monge-Elkan similarity metric to detect matches. An empirical study was conducted on three well known datasets to evaluate the proposed method. The results of the experiment showed that the proposed method has the potential to match business process models in an effective manner when step two of the method is based on synonyms and hypernyms.

scholarly journals A Method Based on a New Word Embedding Approach for Process Model Matching

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Mostefai Abdelkader ◽  
Mekour Mansour
Keyword(s):  
Business Process ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Similarity Score ◽  
Word Embedding ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Dimensional Vector ◽  
Business Process Model ◽  
Model Matching ◽  
Vector Representation ◽  
Matching Process

This paper proposes a method based on a new word embedding approach for matching business process model. The proposed method aligns two process models in four steps. First activity labels are extracted and pre-processed to remove meaningless words, then each word composing an activity label and using a semantic similarity metric based on WordNet is represented with an n-dimensional vector in the space of the vocabulary of the two labels to be compared. Based on these representations, a vector representation of each activity label is computed by averaging the vectors representing words found in the activity label. Finally, the two activity labels are reported as similar if their similarity score computed using the cosine metric is greater than some predefined threshold. An experiment was conducted on well-known dataset to assess the performance of the proposed method. The results showed that the proposed method shared the first place with RMM/NHCM and OPBOT tools and can be effective in matching process models.

scholarly journals Optimization-Based Business Process Model Matching

2021 ◽  
pp. 61-72
Author(s):  
Merih Seran Uysal ◽  
Dominik Hüser ◽  
Wil M.P Van der Aalst
Keyword(s):  
Business Process ◽  
Process Model ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Business Process Model ◽  
Model Matching ◽  
Business Process Models ◽  
Behavioral Similarity ◽  
Label Information ◽  
Real World Datasets

The rapid increase in generation of business process models in the industry has raised the demand on the development of process model matching approaches. In this paper, we introduce a novel optimization-based business process model matching approach which can flexibly incorporate both the behavioral and label information of processes for the identification of correspondences between activities. Given two business process models, we achieve our goal by defining an integer linear program which maximizes the label similarities among process activities and the behavioral similarity between the process models. Our approach enables the user to determine the importance of the local label-based similarities and the global behavioral similarity of the models by offering the utilization of a predefined weighting parameter, allowing for flexibility. Moreover, extensive experimental evaluation performed on three real-world datasets points out the high accuracy of our proposal, outperforming the state of the art.

scholarly journals Simplifying complex business process models through abstraction and Facilitating their reusability through business process model matching

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Χριστίνα Τσαγκάνη
Keyword(s):  
Business Process ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Business Process Model ◽  
Model Matching ◽  
Business Process Models

Οι επιχειρησιακές διαδικασίες αποτελούν μια σημαντική πηγή γνώσης, ειδικά για οργανισμούς που οργανώνονται με τρόπο προσανατολισμένο στις διαδικασίες. Τα μοντέλα επιχειρησιακών διαδικασιών και η σχετική τεκμηρίωση, που είναι ένας τρόπος περιγραφής των οργανωτικών δραστηριοτήτων, μπορούν να αποτελέσουν ένα μέσο αποτελεσματικότερης λειτουργίας και κερδοφορίας για τις επιχειρήσεις. Ως εκ τούτου, οι επιχειρησιακές διαδικασίες μπορούν να θεωρηθούν ως μέρος των οργανωτικών περιουσιακών στοιχείων ενός οργανισμού, τα οποία μπορούν να αξιοποιηθούν και να ενισχύσουν περαιτέρω τη βιωσιμότητα και την κερδοφορία του. Η έρευνα που παρουσιάζεται σε αυτή τη διατριβή επικεντρώνεται στην παροχή μεθοδολογιών που βοηθούν στην εκμετάλλευση αυτών των περιουσιακών στοιχείων, όπως περιγράφεται παρακάτω.Πολύ συχνά, τα μοντέλα επιχειρησιακών διαδικασιών περιέχουν πολλές σημαντικές πληροφορίες, ειδικά όταν πρόκειται για μοντέλα που απεικονίζουν ήδη αυτοματοποιημένες διαδικασίες ή διαδικασίες που θα αυτοματοποιηθούν. Αυτή η μεγάλη ποσότητα πληροφοριών αναστέλλει τη γρήγορη κατανόηση και χρήση τους, ειδικά από ανθρώπους σε υψηλότερα επίπεδα της οργανωτικής ιεραρχίας, όπως στελέχη επιχειρήσεων, διευθυντές και γενικοί διευθυντές, που δεν ενδιαφέρονται για ασήμαντες λεπτομέρειες αλλά πρέπει να επικεντρωθούν στα σημαντικά σημεία της επιχειρησιακής διαδικασίας, για να λάβουν αποφάσεις. Έτσι, μεγάλα και πολύπλοκα μοντέλα επιχειρησιακών διαδικασιών δημιουργούν την ανάγκη για απλοποιημένες εκδόσεις μοντέλων, οι οποίες, ωστόσο, διατηρούν σημαντικές πληροφορίες, όπως μεταξύ άλλων της επικοινωνίας μεταξύ των διαφόρων επιχειρηματικών τομέων που απεικονίζονται σε αυτά τα μοντέλα, και συνεπώς ενισχύουν τη χρηστικότητα των αρχικών μοντέλων. Επομένως, είναι επιτακτική ανάγκη να δημιουργηθούν προσεγγίσεις ικανές να παρέχουν απλουστευμένες μορφές των μοντέλων επιχειρησιακών διαδικασιών που θα βοηθούν στη γρήγορη κατανόησή τους αντί να δημιουργούνται νέα απλούστερα μοντέλα για την ίδια αναλυτική διαδικασία.Επιπλέον, δεδομένου ότι οι πληροφορίες που συλλέγονται σε υπάρχουσες λεπτομερείς επιχειρησιακές διαδικασίες αποτελούν σημαντικό οργανωτικό περιουσιακό στοιχείο, καθίσταται επιτακτική η επαναχρησιμοποίηση τους, ειδικά λαμβάνοντας υπόψη ότι, οι επιχειρήσεις ενδέχεται να αντιμετωπίσουν παρόμοια σενάρια μοντελοποίησης, εντός και μεταξύ, των επιχειρησιακών περιοχών τους. Εκτός αυτού, έχει αποδειχτεί ότι η μοντελοποίηση επιχειρησιακών διαδικασιών σύγχρονων επιχειρήσεων από το μηδέν είναι δύσκολη, χρονοβόρα, επιρρεπής σε σφάλματα και απαιτεί εκτεταμένες προσπάθειες και πόρους για την παραγωγή ποιοτικών μοντέλων. Επομένως, απαιτούνται προσεγγίσεις που επιτρέπουν την επαναχρησιμοποίηση υπαρχόντων μοντέλων επιχειρησιακών διαδικασιών και διευκολύνουν τις προσπάθειες μοντελοποίησης.Αυτή η διατριβή προτείνει νέες λύσεις για την αντιμετώπιση των προαναφερθεισών προκλήσεων, δηλαδή της απλούστευσης και της επαναχρησιμοποίησης μοντέλων επιχειρησιακών διαδικασιών. Συγκεκριμένα, εισάγει ένα πλαίσιο για τη μετατροπή σύνθετων και μεγάλων μοντέλων σε απλούστερα και μικρότερα, προκειμένου να βελτιωθεί η κατανόηση και η επαναχρησιμοποίηση τους. Αυτά τα απλοποιημένα μοντέλα συμπληρώνουν τα αναλυτικά μοντέλα διαδικασίας. Προς το σκοπό αυτό, προτείνεται μια μεθοδολογία βασισμένη σε κανόνες που επεκτείνεται πέραν της αφαίρεσης των δραστηριοτήτων, εστιάζοντας στα χαρακτηριστικά των συστατικών των μοντέλων και τις συσχετίσεις τους. Αυτή η προσέγγιση εφαρμόζεται αυτόματα σε ολόκληρο το μοντέλο μιας επιχειρησιακής διαδικασίας με αποτελεσματικό και αποδοτικό τρόπο, το οποίο επιβεβαιώνεται από τα αποτελέσματα των πειραματικών μετρήσεων.Επιπλέον, η παρούσα διατριβή προτείνει μια μεθοδολογία αντιστοίχισης μοντέλων διαδικασιών που αυξάνει τη χρηστικότητα των ήδη απλουστευμένων μοντέλων διαδικασίας, ενώ διευκολύνει τις προσπάθειες μοντελοποίησης διαδικασιών. Αυτή η προσέγγιση διασφαλίζει την ποιότητα των αποτελεσμάτων αντιστοίχισης, ενσωματώνοντας πολλές μετρικές ομοιότητας. Επίσης, μπορεί να εφαρμοστεί σε μεγάλα μοντέλα διαδικασιών επεκτείνοντας τον αλγόριθμο Α*. Ειδικά, προτείνει την εκμετάλλευση των ιδιοτήτων των στοιχείων του μοντέλου διαδικασίας σε μια προσπάθεια μείωσης του χώρου αντιστοίχισης, ο οποίος είναι ιδιαίτερα χρήσιμος σε περιπτώσεις που αντιστοιχίζονται μεγάλα μοντέλα διαδικασιών. Η αποτελεσματικότητα και εφαρμογή της προτεινόμενης μεθοδολογίας αποδεικνύεται μέσω πειραματικής αξιολόγησης.

Bridging the Gap between Business Process Models and Service Composition Specifications

2013 ◽  
pp. 124-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephan Buchwald ◽  
Thomas Bauer ◽  
Manfred Reichert
Keyword(s):  
Business Process ◽  
Service Composition ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Process Models ◽  
The Other ◽  
System Model ◽  
Domain Experts ◽  
Business Process Models ◽  
It Alignment ◽  
The One

Fundamental goals of any Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) include the flexible support and adaptability of business processes as well as improved business-IT alignment. Existing approaches, however, have failed to fully meet these goals. One of the major reasons for this deficiency is the gap that exists between business process models on the one hand and workflow specifications and implementations (e.g., service composition schemes) on the other hand. In practice, each of these two perspectives has to be regarded separately. In addition, even simple changes to one perspective (e.g. due to new regulations or organizational change) require error-prone, manual re-editing of the other one. Over time, this leads to degeneration and divergence of the respective models and specifications. This aggravates maintenance and makes expensive refactoring inevitable. This chapter presents a flexible approach for aligning business process models with workflow specifications. In order to maintain the complex dependencies that exist between high-level business process models (as used by domain experts) and technical workflow specifications (i.e., service composition schemas), respectively, (as used in IT departments) we introduce an additional model layer – the so-called system model. Furthermore, we explicitly document the mappings between the different levels (e.g., between business process model and system model). This simplifies model adoptions by orders of magnitudes when compared to existing approaches.

scholarly journals Business processes exceptions in relation to operational performance

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (5) ◽  
pp. 908-922 ◽  
Author(s):  
Remco Dijkman ◽  
Oktay Turetken ◽  
Geoffrey Robert van IJzendoorn ◽  
Meint de Vries
Keyword(s):  
Business Process ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Business Processes ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Operational Performance ◽  
Normal Flow ◽  
Throughput Time ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Business Process Models ◽  
Practical Implications

Purpose Business process models describe the way of working in an organization. Typically, business process models distinguish between the normal flow of work and exceptions to that normal flow. However, they often present an idealized view. This means that unexpected exceptions – exceptions that are not modeled in the business process model – can also occur in practice. This has an effect on the efficiency of the organization, because information systems are not developed to handle unexpected exceptions. The purpose of this paper is to study the relation between the occurrence of exceptions and operational performance. Design/methodology/approach The paper does this by analyzing the execution logs of business processes from five organizations, classifying execution paths as normal or exceptional. Subsequently, it analyzes the differences between normal and exceptional paths. Findings The results show that exceptions are related to worse operational performance in terms of a longer throughput time and that unexpected exceptions relate to a stronger increase in throughput time than expected exceptions. Practical implications These findings lead to practical implications on policies that can be followed with respect to exceptions. Most importantly, unexpected exceptions should be avoided by incorporating them into the process – and thus transforming them into expected exceptions – as much as possible. Also, as not all exceptions lead to longer throughput times, continuous improvement should be employed to continuously monitor the occurrence of exceptions and make decisions on their desirability in the process. Originality/value While work exists on analyzing the occurrence of exceptions in business processes, especially in the context of process conformance analysis, to the best of the authors’ knowledge this is the first work that analyzes the possible consequences of such exceptions.

scholarly journals Pengujian Unit Plugin Pemberian Anotasi Efek Secara Semantik pada Proses Bisnis BPMN

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 170
Author(s):  
Hilman Nuril Hadi
Keyword(s):  
Business Process ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Business Processes ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Unit Testing ◽  
Business Process Model ◽  
Testing Technique ◽  
Modeling Tools ◽  
Path Testing ◽  
Future Business

Business process model was created to make it easier for business process stakeholders to communicate and discuss the structure of the process more effectively and efficiently. Business process models can also be business artifacts and media that can be analyzed further to improve and maintain organizational competitiveness. To analyze business processes in a structured manner, the effect/results of the execution of business processes will be one of the important information. The effect/result of the execution of certain activities or a business process as a whole are useful for managing business processes, including for improvements related to future business processes. This effect annotation approach needs to be supported by business process modeling tools to assist business analysts in managing business processes properly. In previous research, the author has developed a plugin that supports business analysts to describe the effects semantically attached to activities in the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) business process model. In this paper, the author describes the unit testing process and its results on the plugin of semantic effect annotation that have been developed. Unit testing was carried out using the basic path testing technique and has obtained three test paths. The results of unit test for plugin are also described in this paper.

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