RESEARCH ON WORKFLOW SIMULATION TECHNOLOGY FOR BUSINESS PROCESS REENGINEERING

Enterprise business process modeling, analyzing, and model-based re-building are three very important stages that ensure the successful implementation of business process reengineering. Workflow management is a valid information technology that covers all these three stages. Up to now, the simulation of workflow model is not so satisfied. In this paper, a new workflow simulation method based on virtual operating environment is proposed. By building up workflow virtual operating environment, the simulating engine impels the workflow instance, dealing with semi-automatic or manual activities automatically. And it deals with the uncertainty happened in simulating process by using rules and stochastic variable together. In order to enhance the reliability and visibility of simulation, virtual reality is introduced to animated show of simulation. In this paper, the structure of workflow virtual operating environment is given. The operation of simulation engine and agent based realization of virtual environment is discussed.