A Framework for Integrating Real-World Events and Business Processes in an IoT Environment

Business process management is essential for companies to document, execute, monitor, and optimize their business processes. These processes are often influenced by external events occurring in the process context, especially when considering Internet of Things (IoT) scenarios. Modeling constructs for different types of events are part of the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) standard. However, when the integration of external events needs to be supported by process-oriented information systems, the gap between conceptual process model and its implementation needs to be bridged. We elicited the requirements for this integration using an use case from the IoT domain. Based on them, we propose a framework that outsources the management of events to an event processing platform that the process engine subscribes to. The BPMN process model is extended with annotations to specify the type of expected events. Further, we implement a system that realizes the proposed integration..

[1]  Opher Etzion,et al.  Event Processing in Action , 2010 .

[2]  Andreas Meyer,et al.  BPMN extension for business process monitoring , 2014, EMISA.

[3]  Mathias Weske,et al.  A Hybrid Approach for Flexible Case Modeling and Execution , 2016, BPM.

[4]  Mathias Weske,et al.  Event-Based Monitoring of Process Execution Violations , 2011, BPM.

[5]  Andreas Meyer,et al.  Extracting Decision Logic from Process Models , 2015, CAiSE.

[6]  David Luckham,et al.  The power of events - an introduction to complex event processing in distributed enterprise systems , 2002, RuleML.

[7]  Andreas Meyer,et al.  Model-Driven Event Query Generation for Business Process Monitoring , 2013, ICSOC Workshops.

[8]  Antonio Estruch,et al.  Event-Driven Manufacturing Process Management Approach , 2012, BPM.

[9]  Jan Mendling,et al.  Process instantiation , 2009, Data Knowl. Eng..

[10]  Jan Mendling,et al.  Predictive Task Monitoring for Business Processes , 2014, BPM.

[11]  Gero Decker,et al.  Complex Events in Business Processes , 2007, BIS.

[12]  Andreas Meyer,et al.  An Event Processing Platform for Business Process Management , 2013, 2013 17th IEEE International Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Conference.

[13]  Alejandro P. Buchmann,et al.  Event Stream Processing Units in Business Processes , 2013, BPM.

[14]  Yehia Taher,et al.  The Butterfly: An Intelligent Framework for Violation Prediction within Business Processes , 2016, IDEAS.

[15]  Andreas Meyer,et al.  Improving business process intelligence by observing object state transitions , 2015, Data Knowl. Eng..