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Modeling Constraint-based Processes: a Supervisory Control Theory Application

Eduardo Alves Portela Santos¹, Agnelo Denis Vieira¹, Sauro Schaidt¹ and Eduardo de Freitas Rocha Loures¹

1. Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Parana, Graduate Program in Industrial and Systems Engineering and Graduate Program in Health Technology
   Imaculada Conceicao 1155, Curitiba, Brazil
   {eduardo.portela,agnelo.vieira, sauro.schaidt, eduardo.loures}@pucpr.br

Abstract

Constraint-based processes require a set of rules that limit their behavior to certain boundaries. In these processes, the control flow is defined implicitly as a set of constraints or rules, and all possibilities that do not violate any of the given constraints are allowed to be executed. The present paper proposes a new approach to deal with constraint-based processes. The proposed approach is based on Supervisory Control Theory, a formal foundation for building controllers for discrete-event systems. The controller proposed in this paper monitors and restricts execution sequences of activities such that constraints are always obeyed. We demonstrate that our approach may be used as a declarative language for constraint-based processes. In order to provide support for users of such processes and to facilitate the using of our control approach, we offer a set of constraints modeled by automata. This set encompasses the constraints frequently needed in workflow system.

Key words

constraint-based processes, Supervisory Control Theory, declarative languages, flexible processes

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.2298/CSIS131029026S

Publication information

Volume 11, Issue 4 (October 2014)
Special Issue on Advances in Systems, Modeling, Languages and Agents
Year of Publication: 2014
ISSN: 2406-1018 (Online)
Publisher: ComSIS Consortium

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How to cite

Santos, E. A. P., Vieira, A. D., Schaidt, S., Loures, E. d. F. R.: Modeling Constraint-based Processes: a Supervisory Control Theory Application. Computer Science and Information Systems, Vol. 11, No. 4, 1229–1247. (2014), https://doi.org/10.2298/CSIS131029026S