A Domain Specific Strategy for Complex Dynamic Processes

2011 ◽  
pp. 1422-1446
Author(s):  
Semih Cetin ◽  
N. Ilker Altintas ◽  
Ozgur Tufekci

This chapter identifies the issues that might create orthogonal complexities for process dynamism, and decouples the components implementing them in a “domain specific” way. Authors believe that traditional process management techniques for modeling and executing the processes still fall short to improve the dynamism of an enterprise. Some of the reasons are: using too “generic” techniques and tools for process management that are not scalable enough for typical business cases, having lack of architectural coverage to manage the tradeoffs between dynamism and other business quality issues, insufficient support for integrating legacy business processes, and unbalanced guidance between “primary” and “supportive” processes. In order to improve the business agility particularly with dynamic processes, effective abstraction and composition techniques are needed for the systematic design of primary and supportive processes in an organization. Authors bring in the “Domain Specific Kit” abstraction as a way to improve the dynamism of complex processes.

Author(s):  
Semih Cetin ◽  
N. Ilker Altintas ◽  
Ozgur Tufekci

This chapter identifies the issues that might create orthogonal complexities for process dynamism, and decouples the components implementing them in a “domain specific” way. Authors believe that traditional process management techniques for modeling and executing the processes still fall short to improve the dynamism of an enterprise. Some of the reasons are: using too “generic” techniques and tools for process management that are not scalable enough for typical business cases, having lack of architectural coverage to manage the tradeoffs between dynamism and other business quality issues, insufficient support for integrating legacy business processes, and unbalanced guidance between “primary” and “supportive” processes. In order to improve the business agility particularly with dynamic processes, effective abstraction and composition techniques are needed for the systematic design of primary and supportive processes in an organization. Authors bring in the “Domain Specific Kit” abstraction as a way to improve the dynamism of complex processes.


Author(s):  
Alberto Armijo ◽  
Mikel Sorli

Most of the industrial organizations, including SMEs, need to quickly react and adapt to the changing market conditions imposed by globalization, such as new sustainability directives or new type of customers. The fulfillment of these requirements on time is a must so as to remain competitive in the global markets. Since data management information systems are already present in almost all the corpus of industrial enterprises as custom developments or standard PLM solutions, the natural technical evolution that aims to provide an effective answer to these changing market conditions comprises the shifting from a data management perspective towards a process management view. Hence, the challenge is how to manage business processes that build upon existing information systems so as to encourage business agility, efficiency, and interoperability. The proposed approach roots on the Business Process Management (BPM) discipline and leverages process optimization through the systematic modeling and reengineering of business processes accompanied by supporting interoperable and configurable eco-services, which are conceived as sustainability-aware services designed to optimize some aspects of the product life-cycle through eco-constraints management.


Author(s):  
Valéria Rocha Da Costa ◽  
José Márcio Diniz Filho

Process management, innovation, technology, and knowledge management are tools to achieve better results and create value for an organization, specifically for the law firm. This is why organizational processes, or business processes, have become fundamental structures for the management of modern organizations and to maintain the competitiveness of organizations. As a result, it was possible to identify that the use of process management techniques and tools is decisive for rational use of processes, increased productivity, and better customer service, presenting an ideal conceptual model.


Author(s):  
Manfred Reichert ◽  
Peter Dadam

In dynamic environments it must be possible to quickly implement new business processes, to enable ad-hoc deviations from the defined business processes on-demand (e.g., by dynamically adding, deleting or moving process activities), and to support dynamic process evolution (i.e., to propagate process schema changes to already running process instances). These fundamental requirements must be met without affecting process consistency and robustness of the process-aware information system. In this chapter the authors describe how these challenges have been addressed in the ADEPT2 process management system. Their overall vision is to provide a next generation technology for the support of dynamic processes, which enables full process lifecycle management and which can be applied to a variety of application domains.


Author(s):  
Leila Kord Toudeshki ◽  
Mir Ali Seyyedi ◽  
Afshin Salajegheh

Business competency emerges in flexibility and reliability of services that an enterprise provides. To reach that, executing business processes on a context-aware business process management suite which is equipped with monitoring, modeling and adaptation mechanisms and smart enough to react properly using adaptation strategies at runtime, are a major requisite. In this paper, a context-aware architecture is described to bring adaptation to common business process execution software. The architecture comes with the how-to-apply methodology and is established based on process standards like business process modeling notation (BPMN), business process execution language (BPEL), etc. It follows MAPE-K adaptation cycle in which the knowledge, specifically contextual information and their related semantic rules — as the input of adaptation unit — is modeled in our innovative context ontology, which is also extensible for domain-specific purposes. Furthermore, to support separation of concerns, we took apart event-driven adaptation requirements from process instances; these requirements are triggered based on ontology reasoning. Also, the architecture supports fuzzy-based planning and extensible adaptation realization mechanisms to face new or changing situations adequately. We characterized our work in comparison with related studies based on five key adaptation metrics and also evaluated it using an online learning management system case study.


Author(s):  
Matteo Zavatteri ◽  
Carlo Combi ◽  
Luca Viganò

AbstractA current research problem in the area of business process management deals with the specification and checking of constraints on resources (e.g., users, agents, autonomous systems, etc.) allowed to be committed for the execution of specific tasks. Indeed, in many real-world situations, role assignments are not enough to assign tasks to the suitable resources. It could be the case that further requirements need to be specified and satisfied. As an example, one would like to avoid that employees that are relatives are assigned to a set of critical tasks in the same process in order to prevent fraud. The formal specification of a business process and its related access control constraints is obtained through a decoration of a classic business process with roles, users, and constraints on their commitment. As a result, such a process specifies a set of tasks that need to be executed by authorized users with respect to some partial order in a way that all authorization constraints are satisfied. Controllability refers in this case to the capability of executing the process satisfying all these constraints, even when some process components, e.g., gateway conditions, can only be observed, but not decided, by the process engine responsible of the execution. In this paper, we propose conditional constraint networks with decisions (CCNDs) as a model to encode business processes that involve access control and conditional branches that may be both controllable and uncontrollable. We define weak, strong, and dynamic controllability of CCNDs as two-player games, classify their computational complexity, and discuss strategy synthesis algorithms. We provide an encoding from the business processes we consider here into CCNDs to exploit off-the-shelf their strategy synthesis algorithms. We introduce $$\textsc {Zeta}$$ Z E T A , a tool for checking controllability of CCNDs, synthesizing execution strategies, and executing controllable CCNDs, by also supporting user interactivity. We use $$\textsc {Zeta}$$ Z E T A to compare with the previous research, provide a new experimental evaluation for CCNDs, and discuss limitations.


Author(s):  
Н.С. Хорошавина ◽  
М.С. Абрашкин

Цифровые технологии существенно влияют на мировой рынок, внося коррективы в расстановку сил на нем. Используемые ранее подходы к управлению бизнес-процессами становятся не актуальными в современных условиях. Без цифровизации наукоемкие производства будут не способны выдержать конкурентную борьбу, и вынуждены будут уйти с рынка. В то же время современные условия хозяйствования диктуют необходимость постоянного совершенствования бизнес-процессов наукоемких предприятий, их оптимизации. Данные принципы являются основой концепции бережливое производство, реализация которых становится более эффективной при условии использования цифровых технологий. В статье рассмотрены вопросы интеграции концепции бережливое производство и цифровых технологий на наукоемких предприятиях. Показан пример успешной реализации принципов данной концепции с использованием цифровых подходов к оптимизации бизнес-процессов наукоемкого производства. В современных условиях важнейшим активом любого предприятия, в том числе и наукоемкого производства, являются данные. Реализация принципов бережливого производства требует обработки значительного объема информации. Цифровые технологии позволяют анализировать информационные потоки в режиме реального времени, моделировать бизнес-процессы и тем самым, способствуют более качественному и оперативному принятию решений по оптимизации бизнес-процессов наукоемких производств. Только объединив принципы концепции бережливое производство и возможности, которые дает цифровизация, наукоемкие предприятия смогут не просто удержать свои конкурентные позиции на рынке, но и перейти на более качественный уровень своего развития. Digital technologies significantly affect the global market, making adjustments to the balance of power in it. Previously used approaches to business process management are no longer relevant in modern conditions. Without digitalization, high-tech industries will not be able to withstand competition and will be forced to leave the market. At the same time, modern business conditions dictate the need to constantly improve the business processes of high-tech enterprises and optimize them. These principles are the basis of the concept of lean manufacturing, the implementation of which becomes more effective when using digital technologies. The article deals with the integration of the concept of lean manufacturing and digital technologies in high-tech enterprises. An example of successful implementation of the principles of this concept using digital approaches to optimizing business processes in high-tech production is shown. In modern conditions, the most important asset of any.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sami Wasef Abuezhayeh ◽  
Les Ruddock ◽  
Issa Shehabat

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate and explain how organizations in the construction sector can enhance their decision-making process (DMP) by practising knowledge management (KM) and business process management (BPM) activities. A conceptual framework is developed that recognises the elements that impact DMP in terms of KM and BPM. The development of this framework goes beyond current empirical work on KM in addition to BPM as it investigates a wider variety of variables that impact DMP. Design/methodology/approach A case study is undertaken in the context of the construction industry in Jordan. A theoretical framework is developed and assessment of the proposed framework was undertaken through a questionnaire survey of decision-makers in the construction sector and expert interviews. Findings The outcomes of this research provide several contributions to aid decision-makers in construction organizations. Growth in the usage of KM and BPM, in addition to the integration between them, can provide employees with task-related knowledge in the organization’s operative business processes, improve process performance, promote core competence and maximise and optimise business performance. Originality/value Through the production of a framework, this study provides a tool to enable improved decision-making. The framework generates a strong operational as well as theoretical approach to the organizational utilization of knowledge and business processes.


Author(s):  
Ute Riemann

Business processes are not only variable they are as well dynamic. A key benefit of Business Process Management (BPM) is the ability to adjust business processes accordingly in response to changing market requirements. In parallel to BPM, enterprise cloud computing technology has emerged to provide a more cost effective solution to businesses and services while making use of inexpensive computing solutions, which combines pervasive, internet, and virtualization technologies (). Despite the slow start, the business benefits of cloud computing are as such that the transition of BPM to the cloud is now underway. Cloud services refer to the operation of a virtualized, automated, and service-oriented IT landscape allowing the flexible provision and usage-based invoicing of resources, services, and applications via a network or the internet. The generic term “X-as-a-Service” summarize the business models delivering almost everything as a service. BPM in the cloud is often regarded as a SaaS application. More recently, BPM is being regarded as a PaaS as it facilitates the creation and deployment of applications, in this case business process solutions. The PaaS landscape is the least developed of the four cloud based software delivery models previously discussed. PaaS vendors, such as IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft delivered an application platform with managed cloud infrastructure services however, more recently the PaaS market has begun to evolve to include other middleware capabilities including process management. BPM PaaS is the delivery of BPM technology as a service via a cloud service provider. For the classification as a PaaS a BPM suite requires the following capabilities: the architecture should be multi-tenant, hosting should be off premise and it should offer elasticity and metering by use capabilities. When we refer to BPM in the cloud, what we are really referring to is a combination of BPM PaaS and BPaaS (Business Process as a Service). Business Process as a Service (BPaaS) is a set of pre-defined business processes that allows the execution of customized business processes in the cloud. BPaaS is a complete pre-integrated BPM platform hosted in the cloud and delivered as a service, for the development and execution of general-purpose business process application. Although such a service harbors an economic potential there are remaining questions: Can an individual and company-specific business process supported by a standardized cloud solution, or should we protect process creativity and competitive differentiation by allowing the company to design the processes individually and solely support basic data flows and structures? Does it make sense to take a software solution “out of the box” that handles both data and process in a cloud environment, or would this hinder the creativity of business (process) development leading to a lower quality of processes and consequently to a decrease in the competitive positioning of a company? How to manage the inherent compliance and security topic. Within a completely integrated business application system, all required security aspects can be implemented as a safeguarding with just enough money. Within the cloud, however, advanced standards and identity prove is required to monitor and measure information exchange across the federation. Thereby there seems to be no need for developing new protocols, but a standardized way to collect and evaluate the collected information.


2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-105
Author(s):  
Marco Aurélio de Souza MENDES ◽  
Marcello Peixoto BAX

Abstract Enterprise information architectures still do not deliver all the value that comes from integrating structured and unstructured information. Enterprise Content Management and Business Process Management were developed as autonomous disciplines. Thus, Enterprise Content Management still occurs without formally considering the business processes that generate and manipulate content, while Business Process Management initiatives arise without a documented treatment of materials produced by the processes. The non-integrated approach to these disciplines collaborates to reduce the potential benefits expected in Organizational Change Management programs. In such context, the article discusses the interrelation between Business Process Management and Enterprise Content Management, approaching from a historical view of these disciplines, their conceptual limits, technological support, and dialogues that would benefit both initiatives. The paper contributes to clarify a question still vague in the field of Information Management, which is how to integrate Business Process Management and Enterprise Content Management treating structured and unstructured information in a unified manner. It discusses how to approach this issue in a broad scope of IM by combining the concepts of Enterprise Content Management and Business Process Management. Based on a literature review, the paper analyzes and synthesizes experiences in Enterprise Content Management and Business Process Management acquired in the context of a project carried out in a Power Sector Company. The article reveals problems in separating approaches to Enterprise Content Management and Business Process Management. It shows the importance of an effort for integration and presents three instruments that promote the linkage of the two initiatives, approximating process offices and analysts’ information.


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