SLMToolBox: enterprise service process modelling and simulation by coupling DEVS and services workflow

Abstract

Market competition is pushing companies to differentiate themselves from competitors by developing customized services in addition to their original production (either physical or digital). It drives the emergence of service process modelling to describe more precisely the composition of services. Nevertheless, business initiatives modelling can be very complex to set, laying at the heart of many business decisions and demanding a lot of time and effort to handle and operate unambiguously. A well-designed and well-built business model can lower the risk of operating a service process and in consequence making enterprises more successful in their objectives. To this end, the paper recalls the MDSEA methodology and presents the key concept of the transformation of EA* and BPMN concepts into simulation Workflows. Then it introduces the implementation done with the SLMToolBox that is an Eclipse RCP service graphical modeler, model transformer, and simulation engine. In more details, it runs transformation from service processes models designed by business users to BPMN models. Then the BPMN models can be transformed to DEVS models to simulate the behavior of the entire process model. In addition, enterprises are facing situations where future (undeveloped yet) enterprise services need to be integrated with existing ones. To go further and for a better integration and deployment of service models in the enterprise, we propose to combine service process M&S with service calls execution Workflow. To achieve that goal, we are mashing up simulation of services modelled with existing enterprise web services calls. The interoperability between real and simulated services is handled by the tool Taverna Workflow and HLA RTI. This step is pushing one step further the expertise in the MDSEA methodology, attempting to pave the way from service design to IT development.

Developing appropriate pricing models for workflow and workflow reengineering in case of federated ERP system

“…There are also many works related to workflow modeling and simulation like Bazoun et al (2016), Ougaabal et al (2019), and Chen et al (2015), which can be considered as related to this paper. However, the main difference in this work is that this work relies on modeling and simulation as a base to determine the complexity of workflows as a variable that affects the suitable workflow modeling.…”

XML-based DEVS modelling and simulation tracking

“…The challenge of this work is the lack of a standardised representation of DEVS models despite some works of Simulation Interoperability Standards Organisation and DEVS Standardization Group (Garredu, 2013). In Bazoun et al (2016), ATL and XSLT are also used to obtain final DEVS models that can be viewed and simulated by the DEVS simulator. In fact, ATL transformation is applied to transform conceptual level of service processes models into business process modelling and notation (BPMN).…”

BPMN Coordination and Devs Network Architecture for Healthcare Organizations

“…In this context, there are some studies In the literature using BPMN model with DEVS model, these studies are based on meta-model approach (OMG 2003), which is one of the most used transformation techniques that includes the mapping of BPMN concepts to DEVS concepts. Based on the proposed approach of BPMN to DEVS (Cetinkaya, Verbraeck, and Seck, 2012) which presented a Model Driven Development (MDD) framework for modeling and Simulation (MDD4MS), and where a set of transformation rules were defined: some BPMN concepts (Pools, Lane, SubProcess) were mapped to DEVS coupled component while task, event (start, end and intermediate) and Gateway were mapped to DEVS atomic component (Bazoun et al, 2016). This proposal doesn't cover the intervention of different resources like (human resources, devices and/or Software services) which may affect the execution of the task.…”