Completion Time Estimation for Instances of Generalized Well-Formed Workflow

Completion time estimation for workflow instances is an important basis for real time workflow management and scheduling. Current researches on this topic omitted the fact that: instances of workflow that contains OR-SPLIT are certain to bypass some activities, thus at a particular time point, estimation of completion time for workflow instances should be based merely on activities that were already visited by it and are possible to be visited by it in the future. Firstly, rules were proposed to build reachable subnets for workflow instances. Subsequently, the complex problem of completion time estimation for generalized well-formed reachable subnet was decomposed to simpler ones for potential instance subgraphs, which were computed based on active transition performance equivalent model. Lastly, an example was given to demonstrate the process of completion time estimation for generalized well-formed workflow instances.