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The last step of the text level analysis is the generation of Flows. A flow
describes how activities are interacting with each other. Therefore, during the
process model generation such Flows can be translated to BPMN connecting
objects. When creating the Flows we build upon the assumption that a process
is described sequentially and upon the information gathered in the previous steps.
The word, which connected the items is important to determine how to proceed
and what type of gateway we have to create. So far we support a distinction
between “or”, “and/or”, and “and”. Other conjunctions are skipped.
3.3 Process Model Generation
In the last phase of our approach the information contained in the World Model
is transformed into its BPMN representation. We follow a nine step procedure, as
depicted in Figure 3.3. The first 4 steps: creation of nodes, building of Sequence
Flows, removal of dummy elements, the finishing of open ends, and the processing
of meta activities are used to create an initial and complete model. Optionally,
the model can be augmented by creating Black Box Pools and Data Objects.
Finally, the model is laid out to achieve a human-readable representation.
Fig. 4.
Structural overview of the steps of the Process Model Generation phase
The first step required for the model creation is the construction of all nodes
of the model. After the Flow Object was generated, we create a Lane Element
representing the Actor initiating the Action. If no Lane was determined for an
Action, it is added to the last Lane which was created successfully as we assume
that the process is described in a sequential manner. The second step required
during the model creation is the construction of all edges. Due to the defini-
tion of Flows within our World Model, this transformation is straight-forward.
Whenever a Flow which is not of the type “Sequence” is encountered, a Gate-
way appropriate for the type of the flow is created. An exception to that is the
