A simulation-based and data-driven framework for enabling the analysis and design of business processes based on blockchain and smart contracts solutions

Blockchain and smart contracts solutions can represent key enablers for implementing and enacting flexible and secure business processes, particularly those crossing organizational boundaries (i.e. inter-organizational business processes). Even though organizations foresee enormous potential benefits in using such solutions, the percentage of projects involving Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) that reach the operational stage is still quite low. Among the several reasons that are limiting this growth, there is the lack of well-founded and integrated approaches that are able to help organizations in mitigating the risks of the concrete adoption of DLT-based business processes. To fill this lack, the paper proposes a methodological approach for the dynamic assessment of inter-organizational business processes in which virtual environments, combined with simulation and analytical techniques, are used to create, validate and subject to stress tests business processes relying on blockchain and smart contracts solutions. In application of the model continuity paradigm, the simulation models and the data-driven techniques used for analyzing the business process under definition, represent the starting point for the design of an enactable business process as well as for implementing monitoring, corrective and evolutionary maintenance services related to its operation. In order to show the effectiveness of the proposal, a case study concerning a biomass production chain is presented.