Triggering replanning in an integrated workflow planning and enactment system

Abstract

Workflow management systems support and automate the enactment of business processes. For this purpose, workflow management systems use process definitions that have been manually planned and modeled at build time. Recent research approaches try to enhance this concept by automating the creation of process definitions, using planning algorithms. This avoids the need for predefined process definitions and thus increases flexibility and allows to save costs. An important aspect of flexibility is the ability to react to unanticipated events that might occur during runtime. This Reaction can imply replanning and dynamically adapting the process. This paper shows how replanning can be triggered automatically in an integrated workflow planning and enactment system. Triggers for monitoring process executions are presented and events are defined which lead to the evaluation of corresponding conditions for deciding when replanning is necessary. Finally, advantages, limitations and areas of application of this approach are discussed. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2004.