A Quantitative Analysis of Faulty EPCs in the SAP Reference Model

The SAP reference model contains more than 600 non-trivial process models expressed in terms of Event-driven Process Chains (EPCs). We have automatically translated these EPCs into YAWL models and analyzed these models using WofYAWL, a verification tool based on Petri nets. We discovered that at least 34 of these EPCs contain errors (i.e., at least 5.6% is flawed). We analyzed which parts of the SAP reference model contain most errors. Moreover, based on 15 characteristics (e.g., the size of the model), we used logistic regression to find possible predictors for these errors. This systematic analysis of the SAP reference model illustrates the need for verification tools such as WofYAWL.