Creating event-driven process chain (EPC) diagram

EPC diagram, short for event-driven process chain diagram, is a flowchart based diagram that can be used for resource planning and identifying possible improvements of a business process.

Creating EPC diagram

To create an EPC diagram, right click on EPC Diagram in Diagram Navigator and select New EPC Diagram from the pop-up menu.

Create a EPC diagram through Diagram Navigator

Notations

Name Representation Description Event An event describes what circumstances a function or a process works or which state a function or process results in. Function A function describes the transformations from an initial state to a resulting state. Operator  or  or  And - An and operation corresponds to activating all paths in the control flow concurrently. Or - An or operator corresponds to activating one or more paths among control flows. XOR - An XOR operator corresponds to making decision of which path to choose among several control flows. Organization unit An organization unit determines which person or organization within the structure of an enterprise is responsible for a specific function. Control flow A control flow connects events with function, process paths, or operators creating chronological sequence and logical interdependencies between them. Process path A process path shows the connection from or to other processes. Organization unit assignment An organization unit assignment shows the connection between an organization unit and the function it is responsible for. Information resource An information resource portrays objects in the real world that can be input data serving as the basic of a function, or output data produced by a function. Information flow Information flows show the connection between functions and input or output data, upon which the function reads changes or writes.

A list of supported notations in EPC diagram

Applying stereotype to EPC elements

A stereotype defines how a model element may be extended, and enables the use of platform or domain specific terminology or notation in place of, or in addition to, the ones used for the extended metaclass. You can apply one or more stereotypes to model elements, and decide whether or not to visualize the stereotype or tagged values in views. To apply stereotype to model element:

1. Right click on the model element, or the view of the model element that you want to apply stereotype to. Select Stereotypes > Stereotypes... from the pop-up menu. As a side note for you, once you have ever applied a stereotype on the selected kind of element, you can re-select the same stereotype in this popup menu.
   

   Open Stereotypes page

2. In the model element specification, open the Stereotypes tab and then click on Edit Stereotypes....
   

   Editing stereotypes

3. In the Configure Stereotypes dialog box, click Add....
   

   Adding stereotype

4. In the Stereotype specification dialog box, enter the name of stereotype and click OK.
   

   Naming stereotype

5. This goes back to the specification dialog box. Select the stereotype you want to apply, then click > to assign it to the Selected list.
   

   Selecting stereotype

   NOTE:

   You can also double click on a stereotype to apply it.

   NOTE:

   While clicking on > applies the selected stereotype to model element, you can click < to remove a stereotype selected in Selected list. If you want to apply all available stereotypes to model element, click >>, and likewise, clicking on << removes all the applied stereotypes.

6. Click OK to confirm. The stereotype will then be shown within a pair of guillemets above the name of the model element. If multiple stereotypes are applied, the names of the applied stereotypes are shown as a comma-separated list with a pair of
   guillemets.
   

   Stereotype is applied to element