An Object-Centric Approach to Handling Concurrency in IoT-Aware Processes

The increasing adoption of IoT in the context of Business Process Management (BPM) makes it necessary to efficiently coordinate concurrent processes and activities that involve physical resources. Traditional approaches to handling concurrency in BPM systems are not suitable for automating IoT-aware processes due to novel challenges raised by the IoT. We propose to handle concurrency in IoT based on object-centric processes implemented in the PHILharmonicFlows framework. The framework facilitates the data-driven modeling and coordination of object lifecycles and interactions, which are suitable to address concurrency in IoT-aware processes. The approach is demonstrated in a scenario from smart manufacturing. The results show that PHILharmonicFlows offers a flexible and comprehensible solution for coordinating concurrent activities in IoT settings with constrained physical resources.