An Ontology-Based Evaluation of Process Modeling with Petri Nets

Selecting an appropriate business process modeling technique forms an\ud important task within the methodological challenges of business process management\ud and workflow engineering projects. Many of the available techniques have been\ud developed on the basis of Petri nets, which is a popular modeling technique for\ud workflow-oriented applications. Despite the popularity of Petri nets, however, a\ud comprehensive evaluation of this standard notation is still required. Such an evaluation\ud would afford a deeper understanding of the capabilities and shortcomings of this\ud fundamental process modeling technique. This paper presents the first contribution\ud towards a theoretically sound analysis of the representational capabilities of Petri nets.\ud Based on an established methodology, we conducted a representational analysis of\ud Petri nets using a representation model based on the Bunge ontology. Through this\ud work, we identify a number of issues related to the practice of process modeling with\ud Petri nets in contemporary process management initiatives. Our findings contribute to\ud the ongoing revision and extension of process modeling techniques based on Petri nets\ud and as such may lead to more mature solutions to business process modeling and\ud management