Towards an executable semantics for activities using discrete event simulation

Abstract

The paper aims at answering to the challenge of defining an executable semantics for the activity concept, in the context of Business Process Modeling and Simulation. The main purpose for introducing an activity concept on top of the basic Discrete Event Simulation concepts of objects and events is to define an activity as consisting of a start event and an end event. This idea is well-known from the business process modeling literature, e.g. from BPDM. We also expect the adoption of this concept view for the BPMN activity in the future BPMN 2.0 Specification. A case study is used throughout the paper to illustrate the concepts and to present our results. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.