Modeling and analyzing interorganizational workflows

Workflow management systems are a key technology for improving the effectivity and efficiency of businesses processes within one organization. Today's workflow management systems focus on processes which are circumscribed by the bounds of an organization. However, most workflows cross organizational boundaries. Workflows may interact with individual customers, suppliers, subcontractors and governmental departments. Moreover, phenomena such as electronic commerce, extended enterprises and the Internet stimulate the cooperation between organizations. Therefore, it is interesting to consider workflows distributed over a number of organizations. Interorganizational workflow offers companies the opportunity to re-shape business processes beyond the boundaries of individual organizations. In this paper, we model interorganizational workflows in terms of Petri nets and focus on techniques to verify the correctness of these workflows.