On the syntax of reference model configuration: Transforming the C-EPC into lawful EPC models

Enterprise Systems need to be configured to fit organizational requirements and to provide support for their business operations. Reference models aim at supporting this task but fail in providing adequate conceptual support due to missing configurability of the models themselves. Our research extends the work on a configurable reference modeling approach. In previous research we developed a conceptual notation for configurable reference models. This paper considers a syntactic perspective of reference model configuration. We discuss the lawful environments of configurable nodes and report about syntactic implications of model configuration in these environments. We then apply these findings in the design of an interchange format for configurable reference models and discuss its applicability for the XML-based design of tool support, which ultimately will facilitate the automatic verification and transformation of reference process models to executable workflow specifications.