An XML-based process definition language for integrated process management

Abstract

Business processes are increasingly recognized as important corporate assets that need to be managed throughout their lifecycle. Specially, interests in supply chain management and virtual enterprises require a new paradigm that provides lifecycle support for business processes. Integrated Process Management (IPM) has been proposed as a business process management paradigm that aims at integrating processes using eXtensible Markup Language (XML) and supporting design, analysis, automation, and management of business process knowledge. This paper introduces IPM-PDL, an XML-based process definition language for IPM. Process definitions and related data are integrated using XML which will be translated to a colored Petri Net. Various analysis and simulation can be performed to check the validity of a new process and estimate its performance. The paper also introduces ProcessWare, a prototype system for IPM-process definition language (PDL), along with an extended example which will demonstrate how IPM can effectively manage business processes throughout their lifecycle ranging from process modeling to process knowledge management.