Automatic semantic classification of business process

A handful of researchers have investigated the problem of business process discovery using as input syntactical and structural information that describes business processes. In this work, we explore an additional source of information encoded in the form of annotations that semantically describe business processes. Specifically, we show how business processes can be semantically described using the so called small abstract business processes. These are designated by concepts from an ontology which additionally captures their relationships. We show how this ontology can be built in an automatic fashion from a collection of (concrete) business processes, and we illustrate how it can be refined by domain experts and used in the discovery of business processes, with the purpose of reuse and increase in design productivity. Further information at: dbgroup.como.polimi.it Master Thesis work by Maurizio Piatti, July 2010.