Implementation Framework for Production Case Management: Modeling and Execution

Nowadays, business process modeling and system-supported executions have become a commodity in many companies. Most systems, however, focus on modeling and execution of static, pre-defined processes with standards like the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN). While these static process executions are applicable to a number of traditional processes like purchase orderings or back orderings, they fail at representing variant-rich, flexible processes. One solution for supporting flexible processes is Adaptive Case Management (ACM), where a case manager creates an individual execution path for each process instance, such as a doctor defining a clinical pathway for a specific patient. We found out, however, that both approaches are too strict, either supporting static process definitions with only a limited set of pre-defined flexibility or allowing maximum flexibility but requiring a highly skilled knowledge worker. To overcome this problem, we propose an implementation framework for Production Case Management (PCM) that combines concepts from traditional process management and adaptive case management. PCM combines the modeling of small, static process fragments with the execution flexibility of ACM.