1. Exploiting Semantic Activity Labels for
Specialization of Abstract Process Activities
Andreas Bögl, Michael Karlinger, Christoph Schütz,
Michael Schrefl, and Gustav Pomberger
This work is an outcome of the Vertical Model Integration (VMI) 4.0 project which is supported within the program Regionale Wettbewerbsfähigkeit OÖ by the European Fund for Regional Development as well as the State of Upper Austria.

2. Overview Semantic Annotation of Business Process Activities
Consistent Specialization of Business Process Activities by Label Specialization
Future Work

3. Semantic Annotation of Activities
Business Process Knowledge Base
Semantic Activity Label
Business Process Activity Repository

4. Linguistic Encoding of Activity Labels
An activity label in a business process model as formulated by the modeler typically consists of:
Words describing tasks/actions, e.g., “Verify”, “Define”
Words describing process objects, e.g., “Order”, “Requirements”

5. Linguistic Encoding of Activity Labels
An activity label in a business process model as formulated by the modeler typically consists of:
Words describing tasks/actions, e.g., “Verify”, “Define”
Words describing process objects, e.g., “Order”, “Requirements”

6. Linguistic Encoding of Activity Labels
An activity label in a business process model as formulated by the modeler typically consists of:
Words describing tasks/actions, e.g., “Verify”, “Define”
Words describing process objects, e.g., “Order”, “Requirements”
Interpretation of linguistic meaning of activity labels requires a description of the relationship between the used words

7. Linguistic Encoding of Activity Labels
An activity label in a business process model as formulated by the modeler typically consists of:
Words describing tasks/actions, e.g., “Verify”, “Define”
Words describing process objects, e.g., “Order”, “Requirements”
Interpretation of linguistic meaning of activity labels requires a description of the relationship between the used words
The “Define” task is performed on the “Requirements” object.

8. Linguistic Encoding of Activity Labels
An activity label in a business process model as formulated by the modeler typically consists of:
Words describing tasks/actions, e.g., “Verify”, “Define”
Words describing process objects, e.g., “Order”, “Requirements”
Interpretation of linguistic meaning of activity labels requires a description of the relationship between the used words
Semantic activity labels abstract from concrete lexical representations and encode in a machine-readable format process items and their relationships

9. Process Knowledge Base

10. Semantic Activity Label
A semantic activity label over a process knowledge base consists of a set of process items and relationships from that process knowledge base.

11. Semantic Activity Label

12. Semantic Activity Label

13. Process Activity Repository
A business process activity repository consists of
a process knowledge base
a set of process activities
a set of semantic activity labels over the process knowledge base
and a mapping from process activities to semantic activity labels

14. Behavior-consistent Specialization
Two important definitions of behavior consistency based upon
what a user observes (observation consistency),
which activities a user may invoke (invocation consistency).
Ebert, J. and Engels, G., Observable or invocable behavior –
You have to choose. Technical Report, Universität Koblenz.
We consider an activity S as an observation-consistent specialization of A if and only if the linguistic meaning of A is observable in S.

15. Consistent Activity Specialization
The specialization relationships between process items and relationships in the process knowledge base determine a specialization hierarchy of activities

16. Consistent Activity Specialization
The specialization relationships between process items and relationships in the process knowledge base determine a specialization hierarchy of activities

17. Specialization of Abstract Process Activities

18. Future Work
Development of refinement and extension operators for activity labels in order to support modelers
Process mining: Exploit semantic activity labels in order to find frequent process patterns in existing business process models