Modern business process management (BPM) is increasingly interesting for laboratory automation. End-to-end workflow automation and improved top-level systems integration for information technology (IT) and automation systems are especially prominent objectives. With the ISO Standard Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) 2.X, a system-independent and interdisciplinary accepted graphical process control notation is provided, allowing process analysis, while also being executable. The transfer of BPM solutions to structured laboratory automation places novel demands, for example, concerning the real-time-critical process and systems integration. The article discusses the potential of laboratory execution systems (LESs) for an easier implementation of the business process management system (BPMS) in hierarchical laboratory automation. In particular, complex application scenarios, including long process chains based on, for example, several distributed automation islands and mobile laboratory robots for a material transport, are difficult to handle in BPMSs. The presented approach deals with the displacement of workflow control tasks into life science specialized LESs, the reduction of numerous different interfaces between BPMSs and subsystems, and the simplification of complex process modelings. Thus, the integration effort for complex laboratory workflows can be significantly reduced for strictly structured automation solutions. An example application, consisting of a mixture of manual and automated subprocesses, is demonstrated by the presented BPMS-LES approach.
Keywords: business process management; complex laboratory automation; end-to-end workflows; integration systems; laboratory execution system.