Aligning textual and graphical descriptions of processes through ILP techniques

Abstract

With the aim of having individuals from different backgrounds and expertise levels examine the operations in an organization, different representations of business processes are maintained. To have these different representations aligned is not only a desired feature, but also a real challenge due to the contrasting nature of each process representation. In this paper we present an efficient technique for aligning a textual description and a graphical model of a process. The technique is grounded on using natural language processing techniques to extract linguistic features of each representation, and encode the search as a mathematical optimization encoded using Integer Linear Programming (ILP) whose resolution ensures an optimal alignment between both descriptions. The technique has been implemented and the experiments witness the significance of the approach with respect to the state-of-the-art technique for the same task.