Abstract
Business process engineering and modelling is an important practical activity, presently based on a variety of methodologies. These are practically derived methods, grounded in concepts such as “action”, “event”, “process” and “model”, which can vary according to methodology. In this paper, we formalise these notions of business process, actions and business models, by relating them to well-established theories of time and temporal activity. The ontology of the terms employed in business process engineering is discussed, and formal definitions of the main terms are given. The term “temporal model” of a business process is introduced, and a formal definition of a sub-process is given with relation to the temporal model. A sub-process can be viewed as a module of a business process which can be replaced or altered without affecting the rest of the process. It is shown that existing business process models using business process modelling can be given a logical foundation based on formal temporal theory.