Simulation of BPMN process models: current BPM tools capabilities

Abstract

Nowadays, more and more organizations are using Business Process Management (BPM) to prepare themselves to deal, in an effective way, with the increasingly difficult conditions of modern markets. Essential to BPM is the collection of tools which support the operationalization of the business process concept – BPM tools. These tools deal with business process models, which have to be described with a suitable language. In the present, BPMN is considered the standard modeling language to describe business processes. Once a business process is modeled, a process simulation approach might be used in order to find its optimized version. Therefore, the simulation of business process models, such as those defined in BPMN, appears as an obvious way of improving processes. This paper advances work previously published by the authors regarding BPM tools capabilities in terms of the simulation of BPMN process models. In this context a platform to support the characterization of BPM tools regarding process simulation capabilities has been developed. This platform might be helpful to users who want to select the most adequate BPM tool regarding their simulation needs.