Case handling: a new paradigm for business process support

Case handling is a new paradigm for supporting flexible and knowledge intensive business processes. It is strongly based on data as the typical product of these processes. Unlike workflow management, which uses predefined process control structures to determine what should be done during a workflow process, case handling focuses on what can be done to achieve a business goal. In case handling, the knowledge worker in charge of a particular case actively decides on how the goal of that case is reached, and the role of a case handling system is assisting rather than guiding her in doing so. In this paper, case handling is introduced as a new paradigm for supporting flexible business processes. It is motivated by comparing it to workflow management as the traditional way to support business processes. The main entities of case handling systems are identified and classified in a meta model. Finally, the basic functionality and usage of a case handling system is illustrated by an example. 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.