Continuous planning for solving business process adaptivity

Abstract

Process Management Systems (PMSs, aka Workflow Management Systems - WfMSs) are currently more and more used as a supporting tool to coordinate the enactment of processes. In real world scenarios, the environment may change in unexpected ways so as to prevent a process from being successfully carried out. In order to cope with these anomalous situations, a PMS should automatically adapt the process without completely replacing it. In this paper, we propose a technique, based on continuous planning, to automatically cope with unexpected changes, in order to modify only those parts of the process that need to be changed/adapted and keeping other parts stable. We also provide a running example that shows the practical applicability of the approach. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.