The document discusses reducing complexity in large event-driven process chains (EPCs) through abstraction. It proposes an approach to abstract insignificant model elements based on elementary abstractions like blocks, dead ends, sequences and loops. These elementary abstractions transform fragments of the model based on rules regarding structural elements and non-functional properties like execution time and effort. The goal is to create abstract process models from detailed models containing thousands of elements while preserving the overall execution time of each process.

1. Reducing Complexity of Large EPCs Artem Polyvyanyy Sergey Smirnov Mathias Weske EPK 2008 27 November 2008

2. Motivation Research project with AOK Brandenburg Goal: detailed process models abstract process models ≈ 4 000 EPCs graph-structured process models model elements have annotations: connections -> probabilities functions -> average execution time average execution time of a process must be preserved

3. Motivation Example model : > 300 nodes >150 functions graph-structured model

4. Extended EPC (E, F, C, A, t, e r , p r ) is an extended EPC E is a set of events, E ≠ Ø F is a set of functions, F ≠ Ø C is a set of connectors is a set of nodes is a set of connections

5. Auxiliary Concepts Mean occurrence number of a node the mean number of node occurrence in a process instance Absolute effort of a function e a the mean effort contributed to the execution of the function in a process instance Process absolute effort e p a the mean effort required to execute a process instance

6. Example 0.92 0.08 10 minutes 9.2 minutes 20 minutes 1.6 minutes transition probability relative effort absolute effort

7. Business Process Model Abstraction What model elements are insignificant? absolute effort of a function e a elementary abstractions transformation of a fragment abstraction strategy organization of elementary abstractions How to abstract insignificant elements?

8. Elementary Abstractions Block Dead end Sequence Loop

9. Sequence Elementary Abstraction

10. Block Elementary Abstraction !

11. Dead End Elementary Abstraction

12. Loop Elementary Abstraction

13. Abstraction Example 0.00 0.37 1.00

14. Conclusions Conceptualized the problem of business process model abstraction Proposed the abstraction approach based on rules describing structural transformations dependencies between elements non-functional properties Developed the implementation of the approach