Advanced simulation of resource constructs in business process models

Abstract

Simulation is often used as a tool to assess the performance of business processes. However, current business process simulation engines do not support advanced resource constructs, such as work allocation strategies and case attributes. Using only basic resource constructs leads to performance metrics that deviate significantly from the real process performance. Therefore, a clear need arises for simulation engines that incorporates advanced resource constructs. Addressing this need, we present the resource patterns that should be supported by simulation engines, a conceptual model to support them, and a prototype implementation of this conceptual model. The model and engine are evaluated in a simulation experiment that highlights utilization rates under different conditions. This experiment shows that the advanced resource constructs significantly outperform the basic resource constructs. From this we can also conclude that existing simulation engines must be extended with advanced resource constructs to properly simulate processes from practice that use these constructs.