Automated Planning of Process Models

In times of dynamically shifting markets, firms have to adapt or even design their processes frequently. This is necessary, for instance, since new offers of emerging competitors need to be considered or because of the demand for quick reactions in the form of enhanced services and innovative products. Although the scientific literature also strongly advocates fundamental research on a flexible adaption and design of process models, existing techniques for process modeling and design are insufficient or inadequate to a certain extent (cf. e.g. Borges et al. 2005; Hornung et al. 2007; Ma and Leymann 2008): Such techniques imply a high degree of manual work - even if they are supported, for example, by modeling tools and reference models - and they are very time-consuming and cost- intensive. According to ongoing research in the areas of automated planning and semantic-based process management, both can contribute to a higher level of automation in the design and adaption of process models. The research proposal presented here is part of the interdisciplinary scientific field of Information Systems. It aims to develop important novel theoretical foundations and concepts for a semantic-based, automated design and adaptation of process models. As this research can be regarded as a kind of planning problem, we speak of an automated planning of feasible process models for a given problem definition, based on both a semantic description of a domain and a semantic annotation of possible actions. The research proposed is based on the Design Science Research paradigm (cf. e.g. Hevner et al. 2004; March et al. 1995). Preliminary work has been provided by a previous research project called SEMPRO, which was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). In this respect, I was centrally responsible for content, fundraising, and the management of this project, which was conducted at the University of Augsburg/Germany. The success of the SEMPRO project is not only demonstrated by several publications but also by an approved consecutive research project founded by the DFG as well. Because of my first appointment as a full professor at the University of Innsbruck in February 2009, a further funding by the DFG is neither possible nor intended anymore (thus, double funding is avoided). In fact, I am apply for funding of further fundamental research by the FWF for two reasons: First, novel planning algorithms have to be developed to be able to plan feasible process models for real-world problems considering performance measures (e.g. costs, risks) and resource restrictions. Currently, there is a lack of approaches which address this research subject. In addition, research has to be conducted on the important issue of automated adaption of process models because existing algorithms address this problem only insufficiently or not at all. These research gaps have to be closed in order to contribute to an automated adaption and design of process models. Second, by conducting this research project based on the existing experience, further successful publications in renowned international journals are expected. Moreover, the important transfer of existing know-how to the University of Innsbruck as well as the career development and establishment of a young researcher in a new academic environment would be supported.

In todays increasingly complex business world, the capability to flexibly adapt existing or construct new processes is a vital skill for firms to stay competitive and to respond quickly. Business Process Management (BPM) and in particular approaches aiming to increase flexibility of processes are supporting stakeholders on these issues. Process modeling has proven to be a crucial instrument, for instance, for representing increasingly complex processes within and across firms, developing application systems and conducting business reorganization projects. However, process modeling is often still time consuming and costly as it is usually realized in a manual manner even if it is supported by means of modeling tools or process models with reference character (reference process models).With this project, we align to a research strand we named Automated Process and Service Management which aims to increase process flexibility by means of automation, allowing to support business analyst and modelers in different phases of the BPM Lifecycle. For instance, process mining assists business analysts in the process analysis phase. Automated service selection increases the degree of automation within the phase process implementation and process planning supports modelers by constructing process models in an automated manner in the process modeling phase. In this project, we have developed theoretical foundations, models, and algorithms for the construction and adaption of process models as well as the selection of services. More precisely:(1) Automated construction of process models considering control flow structures and multiple process goals: Compared to manual modelling techniques, we are now able to construct process models in an automated manner using important control flow structures with higher quality in less time. We further developed an approach to construct process models that coordinate multiple actors with own process goals.(2) Automated adaption of existing process models: We developed approaches that enable an automated adaption of existing process models to new requirements and business changes. These approaches allow decreasing the modelling time by up to 90% compared to constructing the according process models from scratch. Further, we developed an approach to adapt process models to changing context information (e.g., environmental influences).(3) Automated service selection considering economic performance measures and resource restrictions: We developed approaches to select services (i.e., web services & mobile services) in an automated manner based on planned process models. Focusing on economic performance measures such as quality of service (QoS) (e.g., price, response time), the developed optimization-based approaches allow to select services while considering resource restrictions (e.g., upper limit regarding the total price).The developed approaches are prototypically implemented as well as evaluated by means of several real-world processes of different firms.