User-Oriented Enterprise Process Modeling Language

Abstract

Enterprise process modeling has been an emerging topic of interest since the early nineties. The research in this area has been driven by the vision of process improvement. There are two key steps in applying process modeling tools and techniques to support process improvement initiatives. These are (i) the correct representation of the processes in the form of a process model, and (ii) the analysis of the processes to identify improvement opportunities. Process modeling is representing processes and the relevant details usually in a graphical language. These details are the inputs to and the outputs from a process, the description of the resources used or consumed by a process, and the relationship of the subjects involved in the process with respect to each other. The literature contains many process modeling tools and techniques. A technique typically involves graphical symbols with their semantics and syntax to capture process details. This thesis presents a brief review of several enterprise process modeling languages that have been developed so far. The strengths and the limitations of these languages are also presented. These form the basis for the requirements of a new enterprise process modeling language. The proposed enterprise process modeling language exploits the strengths of existing process modeling languages. The proposed language is user friendly, yet rigorous in the definition of its constructs. It emphasizes control flow, which is an essential aspect of any process model. Emphasis on control flow is-useful for analyzing a process description by using formal tools such as Petri nets. A comprehensive example is represented in the existing languages and in the proposed language to illustrate the advantage~ of the proposed language.