Modeling Business Processes: A Petri Net-Oriented Approach (Cooperative Information Systems series)

This comprehensive introduction to modeling business-information systems
focuses on business processes. It describes and demonstrates the formal modeling of
processes in terms of Petri nets, using a well-established theory for capturing and
analyzing models with concurrency. The precise semantics of this formal method
offers a distinct advantage for modeling processes over the industrial modeling
languages found in other books on the subject. Moreover, the simplicity and
expressiveness of the Petri nets concept make it an ideal language for explaining
foundational concepts and constructing exercises. After an overview of business
information systems, the book introduces the modeling of processes in terms of
classical Petri nets. This is then extended with data, time, and hierarchy to model
all aspects of a process. Finally, the book explores analysis of Petri net models to
detect design flaws and errors in the design process. The text, accessible to a
broad audience of professionals and students, keeps technicalities to a minimum and
offers numerous examples to illustrate the concepts covered. Exercises at different
levels of difficulty make the book ideal for independent study or classroom
use.