Process architecture is the structural design of general process systems. It applies to fields such as computers (software, hardware, networks, etc.),

business process A business process, business method, or business function is a collection of related, structured activities or tasks performed by people or equipment in which a specific sequence produces a service or product (that serves a particular business g ...

es (

enterprise architecture Enterprise architecture (EA) is a business function concerned with the structures and behaviours of a business, especially business roles and processes that create and use business data. The international definition according to the Federation of ...

, policy and procedures, logistics, project management, etc.), and any other process system of varying degrees of

complexity Complexity characterizes the behavior of a system or model whose components interact in multiple ways and follow local rules, leading to non-linearity, randomness, collective dynamics, hierarchy, and emergence. The term is generally used to c ...

.Dawis, E. P., J. F. Dawis, Wei-Pin Koo (2001). Architecture of Computer-based Systems using Dualistic Petri Nets. Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, 2001 IEEE International Conference on Volume 3, 2001 Page(s):1554 - 1558 vol.3 Processes are defined as having inputs, outputs and the energy required to transform inputs to outputs. Use of energy during transformation also implies a passage of time: a process takes real time to perform its associated action. A process also requires space for input/output objects and transforming objects to exist: a process uses real space. A process system is a specialized

system A system is a group of interacting or interrelated elements that act according to a set of rules to form a unified whole. A system, surrounded and influenced by its open system (systems theory), environment, is described by its boundaries, str ...

of processes. Processes are composed of processes. Complex processes are made up of several processes that are in turn made up of several processes. This results in an overall structural

hierarchy A hierarchy (from Ancient Greek, Greek: , from , 'president of sacred rites') is an arrangement of items (objects, names, values, categories, etc.) that are represented as being "above", "below", or "at the same level as" one another. Hierarchy ...

abstraction Abstraction is a process where general rules and concepts are derived from the use and classifying of specific examples, literal (reality, real or Abstract and concrete, concrete) signifiers, first principles, or other methods. "An abstraction" ...

. If the process system is studied hierarchically, it is easier to understand and manage; therefore, process architecture requires the ability to consider process systems hierarchically. Graphical modeling of process architectures is considered by dualistic Petri nets. Mathematical consideration of process architectures may be found in CCS and the

π-calculus In theoretical computer science, the -calculus (or pi-calculus) is a process calculus. The -calculus allows channel names to be communicated along the channels themselves, and in this matter, it is able to describe concurrent computations whose ...

. The structure of a process system, or its architecture, can be viewed as a dualistic relationship of its

infrastructure Infrastructure is the set of facilities and systems that serve a country, city, or other area, and encompasses the services and facilities necessary for its economy, households and firms to function. Infrastructure is composed of public and pri ...

and suprastructure.Dawis, E. P. (2001). Architecture of an SS7 Protocol Stack on a Broadband Switch Platform using Dualistic Petri Nets. Communications, Computers and signal Processing, 2001. PACRIM. 2001 IEEE Pacific Rim Conference on Volume 1, 2001 Page(s):323 - 326 vol.1 The infrastructure describes a process system's component parts and their interactions. The suprastructure considers the super system of which the process system is a part. (Suprastructure should not be confused with

superstructure A superstructure is an upward extension of an existing structure above a baseline. This term is applied to various kinds of physical structures such as buildings, bridges, or ships. Aboard ships and large boats On water craft, the superstruct ...

, which is actually part of the infrastructure built for (external) support.) As one traverses the process architecture from one level of abstraction to the next, infrastructure becomes the basis for suprastructure and vice versa as one looks within a system or without. Requirements for a process system are derived at every hierarchical level. Black-box requirements for a system come from its suprastructure. Customer requirements are black-box requirements near, if not at, the top of a process architecture's hierarchy. White-box requirements, such as engineering rules, programming

syntax In linguistics, syntax ( ) is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituenc ...

, etc., come from the process system's infrastructure. Process systems are a dualistic phenomenon of change/no-change or form/transform and as such, are well-suited to being modeled by the bipartite

Petri nets A Petri net, also known as a place/transition net (PT net), is one of several mathematical modeling languages for the description of distributed systems. It is a class of discrete event dynamic system. A Petri net is a directed bipartite grap ...

modeling system and in particular, process-class dualistic Petri nets where processes can be simulated in real time and space and studied hierarchically.

References

Quality Systems engineering Systems theory

See also

References