Process design selection using proximity score measurement

Abstract

Recently, business environments have become exceedingly dynamic and competitive. In this situation, many enterprises strive to attract customers by constructing multiple business process (BP) variants. Variances within a single process model are created by a process designer to comply with customers' needs. However, customers are rarely involved in the design phase. In the near future, a customer-centric system will request more flexibility in design customization. The advantages from the establishment of a user analysis tool will be necessary to any organization. This paper presents an analysis technique for measuring the proximity among processes. The proposed proximity score follows the concept of workflow mining in observing the closeness of the relationships among all activities within process variants. The method enables a process modeler to generate a proximity score directly once a user starts to design. A higher proximity score for a new process design emphasizes a closer relationship with the existing activities among process variants. A simple case study is presented to demonstrate the idea of proximity score in the BP design environment. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.