  Abstraction of operation processes is a fundamental step for simulation
modeling. To reliably abstract an operation process, modelers rely on text
information to study and understand details of operations. Aiming at reducing
modelers' interpretation load and ensuring the reliability of the abstracted
information, this research proposes a systematic methodology to automate the
abstraction of operation processes. The methodology applies rule-based
information extraction to automatically extract operation process-related
information from unstructured text and creates graphical representations of
operation processes using the extracted information. To demonstrate the
applicability and feasibility of the proposed methodology, a text description
of an earthmoving operation is used to create its corresponding graphical
representation. Overall, this research enhances the state-of-the-art simulation
modeling through achieving automated abstraction of operation processes, which
largely reduces modelers' interpretation load and ensures the reliability of
the abstracted operation processes.
