Hierarchical Clustering of Business Process Models

Business process is collection of standardized and structured tasks inducing value creation of a company. Nowadays, it is recognized as one of significant intangible business assets to achieve competitive advantages. We introduce a novel approach to business process analysis, which has more and more significance as process-aware information systems are spreading widely over a lot of companies. In this paper, a methodology of business process clustering based on process similarity is proposed. The purpose of business process clustering is to analyze accumulated process models in order to assist new process design or process reengineering. The proposed methodology exploits structural similarity metrics of business processes. We illustrated the methodology with example processes in inducing the hierarchical merged models from the process clusters.