Parent-Child Relation Between Process Instances

Business process management systems are well equipped to support the enactment of business processes. However, relations between process instances have not sufficiently been taken into account. To improve the execution of related process instances, batch activities have been introduced, which are based on jointly executing process activities. When analyzing real-world business processes, we encountered situations in which activities of specific process instances do not have to be executed at all. To conceptualize these situations, this paper introduces parent-child relationships between instances of a process. The approach is implemented in a cloud-based BPMS, and the technical contribution is embedded in a design methodology. A simulation shows that the cycle time and process execution costs can be significantly reduced by using parent-child relationships between process instances.