An Object Oriented Approach to Business Process Modelling

1996 ◽  
pp. 251-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Rohloff
2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (5) ◽  
pp. 948-971
Author(s):  
Kanana Ezekiel ◽  
Vassil Vassilev ◽  
Karim Ouazzane ◽  
Yogesh Patel

Purpose Changing scattered and dynamic business rules in business workflow systems has become a growing problem that hinders the use and configuration of workflow-based applications. There is a gap in the existing research studies which currently focus on solutions that are application specific, without accounting for the universal logical dependencies between the business rules and, as a result, do not support adaptation of the business rules in real time. The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach To tackle the above problems, this paper adopts a bottom-up approach, which puts forward a component model of the business process workflows and then adds business rules which have clear logical semantics. This allows incremental development of the workflows and semantic indexing of the rules which govern them during the initial acquisition. Findings The paper introduces an event-driven model for development of business workflows which is purely logic-based and can be easily implemented using an object-oriented technology, together with a model of the business rules dependencies which supports incremental semantic indexing. It also proposes a two-level inference mechanism as a vehicle for controlling the business process execution and the process of adaptation of the business rules at real time based on propagating the dependencies. Research limitations/implications The framework is strictly logical and completely domain-independent. It allows to account both synchronous and asynchronous triggering events as well as both qualitative and quantitative description of the conditions of the rules. Although our primary interest is to apply the framework to the business processes typical in the construction industry we believe our approach has much wider potential due to its strictly logical formalization and domain independence. In fact it can be used to control any business processes where the execution is governed by rules. Practical implications The framework could be applied to both large business process modelling tasks and small but very dynamic business processes like the typical digital business processes found in online banking or e-Commerce. For example, it can be used for adjusting security policies by adding the capability to adapt automatically the access rights to account for additional resources and new channels of operation which can be very interesting ion both B2C and B2B applications. Social implications The potential scope of the impact of the research reported here is linked to the wide applicability of rule-based systems in business. Our approach makes it possible not only to control the execution of the processes, but also to identify problems in the control policies themselves from the point of view of their logical properties – consistency, redundancies and potential gaps in the logics. In addition to this, our approach not only increases the efficiency, but also provides flexibility for adaptation of the policies in real time and increases the security of the overall control which improves the overall quality of the automation. Originality/value The major achievement reported in this paper is the construction of a universal, strictly logic-based event-driven framework for business process modelling and control, which allows purely logical analysis and adaptation of the business rules governing the business workflows through accounting their dependencies. An added value is the support for object-oriented implementation and the incremental indexing which has been possible thanks to the bottom-up approach adopted in the construction of the framework.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sitalakshmi Venkatraman ◽  
Ramanathan Venkatraman

In the past decades, a number of methodologies have been proposed to innovate and improve business processes that play an important role in enhancing the operational efficiency of an organisation in order to attain business competitiveness. Traditional business process modelling (BPM) approaches are process-centric and focus on the workflow, ignoring the data modelling aspects that are essential for today’s data-centric landscape of modern businesses. Hence, a majority of BPM initiatives have failed in several organisations due to the lack of data-driven insights into their business performance. On the other hand, the information systems of today focus more on dataflows using object-oriented modelling (OOM) approaches. Even standard OOM approaches, such as unified modelling language (UML) methods, exhibit inherent weaknesses due to their lack of formalized innovation with business objects and the dynamic control-flows of complex business processes. In addition to these issues, both BPM and OOM approaches have been augmented with an array of complex software tools and techniques which have confused businesses. There is a lack of a common generalized framework that integrates the well-formalised control-flow based BPM approach and the dataflow based OOM approach that is suitable for today’s enterprise systems in order to support organisations to achieve successful business process improvements. This paper takes a modest step to fill this gap. We propose a framework using a structured six-step business process modelling (BPM) guideline combined with a business object-oriented methodology (BOOM) in a unique and practical way that could be adopted for improving an organisation’s process efficiency and business performance in contemporary enterprise systems. Our proposed business object-oriented process modelling (BOOPM) framework is applied to a business case study in order to demonstrate the practical implementation and process efficiency improvements that can be achieved in enterprise systems using such a structured and integrated approach.


Author(s):  
Ai Rosita ◽  
Supriady Supriady ◽  
Maniah Maniah

[Id]Penyediaan sistem kolaborasi untuk mendukung kelancaran operasional bisnis merupakan kebutuhan yang esensial, terutama bagi organisasi yang tersebar pada rentang geografis yang luas dan melibatkan banyak orang dalam aktivitas bisnisnya. Sebuah sistem kolaborasi berperan memfasilitasi terjadinya workflow proses bisnis yang sudah disusun dengan cara menyediakan sarana berbagi informasi dan komunikasi di semua partisipan proses.Penelitian ini akan membahas tahapan implementasi rancangan sistem kolaborasi untuk mendukung distribusi barang pada perusahaan City Courier, yaitu sebuah perusahaan jasa pengiriman barang dengan agen dan lokasi yang tersebar di beberapa kota.? Pendekatan yang digunakan pada perancangan ini adalah pendekatan berorientasi obyek, dan hasil rancangan diharapkan dapat dijadikan pedoman dalam implementasi sistem berupa pengembangan software sesuai dengan konsep rancangan yang sudah disusun.Kata kunci :Workflow, kolaborasi, rancangan, obyek.[En]Providing collaboration system to support the smooth operation of the business is an essential requirement, especially for organizations that operates over wide geographical range and involves many people in their business activities. Collaboration system can be an enabler that facilitate organization in implementing of business process workflow that has been defined, by providing information sharing and communication across all process participants.This paper will discuss the design phase of collaboration system to support the distribution process on City Courier, a freight company that has agents and locations in several cities. The approach used in this design is the object-oriented approach, and the results of the draft is expected to be used as guidelines in the software development in accordance with the design concept that has been defined.


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