BUSINESS PROCESS MODELLING AND SIMULATION WITH DPMN, ANYLOGIC AND SIMIO - A TUTORIAL

Abstract

Business process modelling and simulation has been a core research topic both in the area of Discrete Event Simulation and in the area of Business Process Management for a long time. However, both areas have largely ignored each other's research results. In particular, Discrete Event Simulation research has not managed to establish a general conceptual foundation and modelling language for Processing Networks, so vendors are using their own proprietary terminology and diagram language in their “process modelling” tools, ignoring the process modelling language BPMN, which has been established as a widely adopted standard in Business Process Management. In this tutorial, we present the conceptual foundations of, and a modelling language for, Activity Networks and Processing Networks. The Discrete Event Process Modelling Notation (DPMN) proposed by Wagner (2018) combines the visual syntax of BPMN with the rigorous semantics of Event Graphs (Schruben 1983). DPMN allows making platform-independent visual simulation models that can be implemented with Discrete Event Simulation platforms such as AnyLogic or Simio.