Process modeling technique

• US 5,781,454 A
• Filed: 03/25/1996
• Issued: 07/14/1998
• Est. Priority Date: 03/25/1996
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Hughes Electronics Corporation (AT&T, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Raytheon Company (Rtx Corporation)
• Inventors: Alexander, Gilbert W.
• Primary Examiner(s): Teska, Kevin J.
• Assistant Examiner(s): ROBERTS, ANDREW S
• Application Number:
  US08/618,050
• Time in Patent Office: 841 Days
• Field of Search: 364/578, 364/512, 364/274, 395/1, 395/500
• US Class Current: 703/2
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 17/02 electric
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling

Abstract

A process modeling technique (50) for concurrent processes. The inventive technique is adapted for use with processes having a plurality of activity steps and includes the steps of identifying the activity steps (72); providing incremental data or preliminary information from one of the activity steps (76); determining a data maturity attribute of the incremental data and providing a parameter with respect thereto (78); and feeding forward the incremental data from the activity step to another activity step along with the data maturity attribute parameter (76, 78). In the specific embodiment, the modeling technique (50) of the present invention includes a step (70) of gathering all available information about the process to be modeled. Next (72) the information corresponding to each activity step is represented by a set of data items. Data maturity thresholds are determined for each activity step (74). Subsequently the model is run using a process simulation tool (80).

Claims

1. A method for simulating a workflow process having a plurality of activity steps at least two of which are at least partially concurrent including the steps of:

creating a model of the process by;

identifying said activity steps,

representing a transfer of preliminary information from a representation of a first activity step to a representation of a second activity step, and

representing a transfer of a data maturity attribute along with said preliminary information from a representation of a first activity step to a representation of a second activity step and

running said model on a computer program.

2. The invention of claim 1 wherein the computer program is a process simulation tool.

3. The invention of claim 1 further including the step of representing information about a first and a second activity step by set of data items.

4. The invention of claim 3 further including the step of identifying a plurality of activity steps within said first and said second activity step.

5. The invention of claim 3 further including the step of representing each of said activity steps by a data maturity file that includes data items from said set of data items.

6. The invention of claim 3 further including the step of determining data maturity thresholds for each for each of said activity steps.

7. A method for creating a model of a process having a plurality of activity steps including the steps of:

identifying and representing said activity steps;

determining data maturity thresholds for each of said activity steps;

representing a feed forward of preliminary information generated by said activity steps;

representing a feed forward of the data maturity of the preliminary information between activity steps; and

running the model on a process simulation tool.

8. A system for simulating concurrent workflow processes comprising:

means for creating a model of a process including;

means for identifying activity steps in said process,

means for representing a transfer of preliminary information from a representation of a first activity step to a representation of a second activity step, and

means for representing a transfer of a data maturity attribute along with said preliminary information from a representation of a first activity step to a representation of a second activity step;

inputting said model into a process simulation program; and

a computer for running said process simulation program.