Colored Petri net based workflow model mapping

Workflow model is useful for representing the activities of work process in business, but there are no tools to analyze and emulate it. In this paper, a series of rules are given which can map the ordinary workflow model into Colored Petri net (CPN) model, which is executable and analyzable in the CPN Tools environment. Some characteristics of the workflow, such as roles, activities, sub-processes, resources and other basic elements are represented with tokens, transitions, substitution transitions, places in the CPN respectively. Some basic structure elements (Sequence, and branches, and connection, or branches, or connections, selection branches) and basic control structures (Sequence structure, parallel structure, single choice, simple merge, cycle, multiple choice, multiple merge)are transformed into CPN models according to the rules given in this paper.