Qualitative and quantitative analysis of workflows based on the UML activity diagram and Petri net

Abstract

Since business workflows are closely related to enterprise performance, successfule execution of workflow is a critical driving force for strategic advantages of enterprise. Therefore, it is quite essential to customer satisfaction and productivity enhancement that structural errors in workflow instances must be detected and their performance must be evaluated before their enactments. For a structural verification and performance evaluation of workflows, this paper integrates the strengths of UML activity diagram and Petri net, proposes the mapping scheme from UML activity diagram to Petri net, verify the structural errors of workflow using the reachability tree analysis, and finally predict the workflow performance before its execution using the business process simulation. Through the proposed workflow analysis procedure, workflow modelers in enterprises can analyze the qualitative and quantitative aspects of workflow in an integrated way.