Batch activities in process modeling and execution

Abstract

In today's process engines, instances of a process usually run independently to each other. However, in certain situations a synchronized execution of a group of instances of the same process is necessary especially to allow the comparison of business cases or to improve process performance. In this paper, we introduce the concept of batch activities to process modeling and execution. We provide the possibility to assign a batch model to an activity for making it a batch activity. As opposed to related approaches, the batch model has several parameters with which the process designer can configure individually the batch execution. A rule-based batch activation is used to enable a flexible batch handling. Our approach allows that several batches can run in parallel in case of multiple resources. The applicability of the approach is illustrated in a case study. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.