Extended collaboration process modeling method enabling model verification

As long as information systems are spread out, many companies attempt to get higher effectiveness by using information technologies and corresponding systems. Distribution and heterogeneousness of information systems, however, give birth to a new management strategy, referred to as collaboration. In order to facilitate collaboration among companies, it is necessary to use a right methodology for modeling collaborative processes accordingly. Even though many modeling methodologies including IDEF3, Petri-Nets, UML, etc. have been widely used for modeling processes, they are inadequate for clearly representing collaborative processes. Therefore, we previously suggested new modeling methodologies for describing collaborative processes such as collaborative process modeling (CPM) and c-IDEF*. In this paper, we introduce an extended version of CPM method (i.e., exCPM) by increasing powers in modeling and analysis of collaborative processes. One of distinct characteristics of exCPM is to support model verification by transforming the exCPM models into Petri-Nets. In this paper, therefore, we focus on model transformations and analysis with case studies. By doing so, we verify how exCPM contributes to clearly describe collaborative works in manufacturing or business domains. We hope exCPM method will be useful to capture and to verify collaboration among cooperating partners so that their productivity will be improved.