During the life cycle of a chemical product and its associated production process, diverse types of work processes are performed, such as design and operational processes. In this contribution, a framework for the modeling of work processes in the chemical industries is presented which comprises an iterative modeling procedure, an extensible modeling language for work processes, and software tools for its practical application. The framework supports the iterative creation of work process models for diverse applications such as work process simulation or enactment and the subsequent export of the models in suitable application tools. Ease of use has been a key design criterion for the framework. Internally, the framework builds on semantic technologies to provide substantial support for model checking and model transformations. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.