Development of a workflow engine based simulation system

Abstract

The phases in the life cycle of business process management employing a BPMS consist of discovery, design, deployment, operations, and analysis, and there is a need for a simulation tool that supports the entire life cycle. Two approaches for workflow simulation are presented in this thesis for the development of such a tool: first, ‘plug-in’ simulation approach which executable PDMs and process instances in progress can be simulated ‘plug-in’ with the aid of standard enactment service mechanisms of an existing workflow engine. Thus, we can execute the proposed workflow simulation algorithms in any commercial WfMS (or BPMS) that conforms to the standards of the Workflow Management Coalition; and, second, ‘embedded’ simulation approach, which is participant simulators are embedded in a workflow engine, together with an algorithm for embedding a discrete-event simulation mechanism into an existing WfMS. We can make possible for short simulation execution considering various process instances in run-time. This thesis describes how the proposed algorithms are implemented and presents the results of the illustrative performance evaluation. To verify the proposed algorithms, major workflow simulation applications at BPM step, such as process model what-if analysis, training of selective participants and a dynamic scheduling system of job shop operations are presented.