Batch activity: enhancing business process modeling and enactment with batch processing

Luise Pufahl, Mathias Weske

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

10 Scopus citations

Abstract

Organizations strive for efficiency in their business processes by process improvement and automation. Business process management (BPM) supports these efforts by capturing business processes in process models serving as blueprint for a number of process instances. In BPM, process instances are typically considered running independently of each other. However, batch processing–the collectively execution of several instances at specific process activities—is a common phenomenon in operational processes to reduce cost or time. Currently, batch processing is organized manually or hard-coded in software. For allowing stakeholders to explicitly represent their batch configurations in process models and their automatic execution, this paper provides a concept for batch activities and describes the corresponding execution semantics. The batch activity concept is evaluated in a two-step approach: a prototypical implementation in an existing BPM System proves its feasibility. Additionally, batch activities are applied to different use cases in a simulated environment. Its application implies cost-savings when a suitable batch configuration is selected. The batch activity concept contributes to practice by allowing the specification of batch work in process models and their automatic execution, and to research by extending the existing process modeling concepts.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1909-1933
Number of pages25
JournalComputing (Vienna/New York)
Volume101
Issue number12
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Dec 2019
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Batch activity
  • Batch processing
  • Business process models
  • Colored Petri Net
  • Process Enactment

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