Simulation is widely used as a tool for analyzing business processes but is mostly focused on examining rather abstract steady-state
situations. Such analyses are helpful for the initial design of a business process but are less suitable for operational decision
making and continuous improvement. Here we describe a simulation system for operational decision support in the context of workflow management. To do this we exploit not only the workflow’s design, but also logged data describing the system’s observed historic behavior, and information extracted about the current state of the workflow. Making use of actual data capturing the current state and historic information allows our simulations to
accurately predict potential near-future behaviors for different scenarios. The approach is supported by a practical toolset
which combines and extends the workflow management system YAWL and the process mining framework ProM.
Keywords Workflow Management - Process Mining - Short-term Simulation