Alaska Simulator Toolset for Conducting Controlled Experiments on Process Flexibility

Alaska Simulator Toolset (AST) is a software suite developed at the University of Innsbruck for exploring different approaches to business process flexibility by using a familiar metaphor, i.e., travel planning and execution. For this, AST provides integrated support of several decision deferral based approaches to process flexibility and enables their systematic comparison. Moreover, AST facilitates the design and execution of controlled experiments through experimental workflow support. This paper introduces AST, explains its underlying meta-model, discusses factors which can be investigated using AST and shows how it can be used for designing and conducting experiments.