Resource modeling and analysis for workflows

A workflow determines the flow of work according to pre-defined business process definitions. It manages the resources required for task execution. In many situations, business processes are constrained by scarce resources. The lack of resources can cause contention, the need for some tasks to wait for others to complete, and the slowing down of the accomplishment of larger goals. This is particularly true in an emergency response system where large quantities of resources, including emergency responders, ambulances, fire trucks, medications, food, clothing, etc., are required. In our previous work, a resource-constrained workflow model is introduced and a resource requirement analysis approach is presented [8]. In this paper, we propose a more efficient resource analysis algorithm for well-nested resource constrained workflows. Instead of traversing a workflow task-by-task from the start task to end task, we consider a block or a procedural branch at a time with this algorithm. After analyzing a block or branch, we replace it with a single task that is equivalent to the block in terms of resource consumption and production. An example is used to illustrate the process of applying the algorithm.