Similarity of business process models in a modular design

摘要

Using sub-processes in business process design enables flexibility, ensures a better understanding of the business scope and simplifies the complexity. A modular process design has several advantages in the area of scalability and re-usage of components. In the current paper we analyze the similarity of business processes when a modular design approach is used for process definition. We consider that the similarity of business processes is an important factor for the identification of the compatibility level between organizations. A better compatibility simplifies the setup in case of collaborations with shared resources and common business results. Process mining algorithms for process discovery and graph comparison techniques adapted are used for this purpose. Process definitions are extracted and reduced to graph format. Graphs are compared considering sub-graph composition and a business process similarity factor is extracted. For graph node match, semantic string similarity algorithms are evaluated and used further. This choice enables flexibility in comparing business processes from different business areas. The theoretical aspects are illustrated on a case study.