SITUATIONS AND PROCESSES

Typical methods for representing business, engineering, and manufactur ing processes represent process information by means of rather restric ted, often graphical languages. These languages are often fine as far as they go, but for many purposes-information sharing, in particular-m uch more precise, detailed representations of enterprise processes are required. In this paper, we develop an approach to the rigorous repre sentation of process information based on situation theory. We begin w ith an informal account of the semantic categories of the approach inc luding situations, infons, types, activities, and processes, as well a s the central relations that can hold between them. A frame work-known as ST-based roughly on the Knowledge Interchange Format(KIF) is intro duced for expressing information in these terms. The use of ST is then illustrated in detail by means of a series of examples. Finally, the formal semantics for ST is sketched, and the language and basic logic of ST is formally defined.