A workflow model is useful for business process analysis. A well-built workflow can help a company streamline its internal processes by reducing overhead. The results of workflow modeling need to be managed as information assets in a systematic; fashion. Reusing these results is likely to enhance the quality of the modeling. Therefore, this paper proposes a document-based workflow modeling mechanism, which employs a case-based reasoning (CBR) technique for the effective reuse of design outputs. A repository is proposed to support this CBR process. A real-life case is illustrated to demonstrate the usefulness of our approach. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.