A heuristic algorithm for computing parallel degree of well-structured workflow nets

In this paper, we propose a heuristic algorithm for computing the parallel degree, PARAdeg, of acyclic well-structured workflow nets. This algorithm makes use of the structural characteristics, i.e. nest structure and the longest path. The algorithm first finds out a firing sequence with larger value of PARAdeg in the order of the depth of nest structure. If the firing sequence includes the longest path, the value could be improved. We also perform an experiment to evaluate the algorithm. The result shows that the accuracy of the algorithm is more than 92%.