Book a Demo

Please note : This help page is not for the latest version of Enterprise Architect. The latest help can be found here.

Prev Next

Timer Event - Boundary

Create BPMN Model

Intermediate Event, Business Process Simulation in Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect

  • Create a Start Event StartEvent1
  • Add a Sequence Flow to a target userTask TaskTakesAbout60Minutes
  • Add a Sequence Flow to a target End Event finished successfully
  • Create an Intermediate Event, dragging the icon from the Toolbox and dropping it onto TaskTakesAbout60Minutes; select 'Edge-Mounted' and 'Timer' from the automatic menus, and call the element Timeout60Minutes
  • Add a Sequence Flow to a target End Event (Error) error_timeout

Configure BPSim

In this section, we create the Configuration Artifact, identify the parent Package and set the parameter values of each element.

Objects

Action

Create Artifact and Package

  • Open the 'Configure BPSim' dialog ('Simulate > Process Analysis > BPSim > Open BPSim Manager')
  • Create an Artifact named 'IntermediateEvent - Boundary - Timer - TruncatedNormal' (in the 'Select/Create Artifact' field, click on the Browse. button and select its parent Package, click on the Add New button, then type in the element name and click on the Save button and the OK button)

Then all the BPMN elements will be loaded in to the 'Configure BPSim' dialog.

StartEvent1

In the element list on the left of the dialog, expand the 'StartEvent' group and click on StartEvent1.

  • Click on the 'Control' tab
  • Click on the 'New Parameter' drop-down arrow and select 'TriggerCount'
  • In the 'Value' field type '100'

TaskTakesAbout60Minutes

In the element list on the left of the dialog, expand the 'Activity' group and click on TaskTakesAbout60Minutes.

  • Click on the 'Time' tab
  • Click on the 'New Parameter' drop-down arrow and select 'ProcessingTime'
  • In the 'Value' field click on the Browse. button and select 'Distribution' and 'TruncatedNormal'
  • In the 'Mean' field type '50'
  • In the 'StandardDeviation' field type '10'
  • In the 'Min' field type '0'
  • In the 'Max' field type '1000'
  • Click on the OK button

Timeout60Minutes

In the element list on the left of the dialog, expand the 'IntermediateEvent' group and click on Timeout60Minutes.

  • Click on the 'Control' tab
  • Click on the 'New Parameter' drop-down arrow and select 'InterTriggerTimer'
  • Set the value to '000:000:000 001:00:00' (that is, 1 hour)

Run Simulation

  • On the Configure BPSim window toolbar, click on the 'Run' icon to open the 'BPSim Simulation Controller' dialog
  • Click on the 'Run' icon drop-down arrow and select 'Standard Simulation'
  • After simulation, click on the button on the tool bar to display the 'BPSim PropertyParameter Values' dialog
  • Click on the Query button and on the 'Group by Property' tab, and expand 'dummyVariable'

On simulation, we get this result:

Analysis

Since the ProcessingTime of TaskTakesAbout60Minutes was set as a distribution value, it turns out that:

  • 93 out of 100 finished in 1 hour, so the normal flow to finished successfully takes effect
  • 7 out of 100 finished in more than 1 hour, so the exception flow to error_timeout takes effect

Other Configurations

In the example folder, there are two other Business Process Simulation Artifacts that set the ProcessingTime as a constant value of 50 minutes and 80 minutes, other settings remain the same.

Run simulation on these two Artifacts:

  • ProcessingTime configured to be 50 minutes always finishes in normal flow
  • ProcessingTime configured to be 80 minutes always finishes in exception flow
Prev Next