Design and Control of Workflow Processes

1. Front Matter

   Pages I-XII

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Hajo A. Reijers

   Pages 1-29

3. Workflow Modeling

   • Hajo A. Reijers

   Pages 31-59

4. Workflow Design

   • Hajo A. Reijers

   Pages 61-126

5. Performance Evaluation of Workflows

   • Hajo A. Reijers

   Pages 127-176

6. Resource Allocation in Workflows

   • Hajo A. Reijers

   Pages 177-206

7. Heuristic Workflow Redesign

   • Hajo A. Reijers

   Pages 207-243

8. System and Practical Experience

   • Hajo A. Reijers

   Pages 245-282

9. Conclusion

   • Hajo A. Reijers

   Pages 283-288

10. Back Matter

    Pages 289-320

    PDF

The motivation behind the conception of this monograph was to advance scientific knowledge about the design and control of workflow processes. A workflow pr- ess (or workflow for short) is a specific type of business process, a way of or- nizing work and resources. Workflows are commonly found within large admin- trative organizations such as banks, insurance companies, and governmental agencies. Carrying out the tasks of a workflow in a particular order is required to handle one type of case. Examples of cases are mortgage applications, customer complaints, and claims for unemployment benefits. A workflow used in handling mortgage applications may contain tasks for recording the application, specifying a mortgage proposal, and approving the final policy. The monograph concentrates on four workflow-related issues within the area of Business Process Management; the field of designing and controlling business processes. The first issue is how workflows can be adequately modeled. Workflow mod- ing is an indispensable activity to support any reasoning about workflows. Diff- ent purposes of workflow modeling can be distinguished, such as system ena- ment by Workflow Management Systems, knowledge management, costing, and budgeting. The focus of workflow modeling in this monograph is (a) to support simulation and analysis of workflows and (b) to specify a new workflow design. The main formalism used for the modeling of workflows is the Petri net. Many - isting notions to define several relevant properties have been adopted, such as the workflow net and the soundness notion.

• Business Process Modeling
• Workflow
• business
• business process
• business process management
• management
• modeling

• Department of Technology Management, Technical University of Eindhoven, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

  Hajo A. Reijers

Policies and ethics