Generating optimized configurable business process models in scenarios subject to uncertainty

ContextThe quality of business process models (i.e., software artifacts that capture the relations between the organizational units of a business) is essential for enhancing the management of business processes. However, such modeling is typically carried out manually. This is already challenging and time consuming when (1) input uncertainty exists, (2) activities are related, and (3) resource allocation has to be considered. When including optimization requirements regarding flexibility and robustness it becomes even more complicated potentially resulting into non-optimized models, errors, and lack of flexibility.ObjectiveTo facilitate the human work and to improve the resulting models in scenarios subject to uncertainty, we propose a software-supported approach for automatically creating configurable business process models from declarative specifications considering all the aforementioned requirements.MethodFirst, the scenario is modeled through a declarative language which allows the analysts to specify its variability and uncertainty. Thereafter, a set of optimized enactment plans (each one representing a potential execution alternative) are generated from such a model considering the input uncertainty. Finally, to deal with this uncertainty during run-time, a flexible configurable business process model is created from these plans.ResultsTo validate the proposed approach, we conduct a case study based on a real business which is subject to uncertainty. Results indicate that our approach improves the actual performance of the business and that the generated models support most of the uncertainty inherent to the business.ConclusionsThe proposed approach automatically selects the best part of the variability of a declarative specification. Unlike existing approaches, our approach considers input uncertainty, the optimization of multiple objective functions, as well as the resource and the control-flow perspectives. However, our approach also presents a few limitations: (1) it is focused on the control-flow and the data perspective is only partially addressed and (2) model attributes need to be estimated.     

A formal and visual modeling approach to choreography based web services composition and conformance verification

Web services have emerged as the building blocks of a service-oriented architecture that supports not only enterprise application integration (EAI) and business process management (BPM) within an organization but also B2B collaboration based on business process integration. The web services choreography approach to B2B process integration allows business partners to orchestrate their own web services privately, while conforming with an agreed specification of the common ordering conditions and constraints under which messages are exchanged among partners’ web services. In this approach, choreography conformance is an essential requirement for the successful implementation of collaborative processes. A formal approach to web services composition and conformance verification based on WS-CDL and WS-BPEL is presented. This approach involves model checking as an automated means of verifying choreography conformance. The main contributions include a precise notion of choreography conformance on which verification is based as well as support for the complementary use of visual modeling (e.g. UML) and standard WS-¹ notations in composition.     

Dynamic partitioning of complex process models

The E³ modeling language offers a set of mechanisms to support the modeling of complex business and engineering processes. The language is based on well-known object-oriented concepts, extended with specific process-related notions. The E³ language is supported by a modeling tool (called E³ p-draw) that offers mechanisms to support the dynamic partitioning of the process model, and enables the creation and the exploitation of multiple model slices. These mechanisms make it possible to master complex and large process models, since the process engineer can focus on specific factors and aspects of the process, ignoring those information that are irrelevant in a specific stage of the modeling activity. The language and the supporting tool have been applied to the modeling of real industrial processes.     

有色Petri网协作模型的BPEL代码实现

Web服务业务流程执行语言（BPEL）提供了有力的技术来聚合封装的功能以及定义高质量的Web服务,然而,尽管功能强大,但是BPEL却难于使用。另一方面,有色Petri（CPNs）可以用于模拟、分析以及校验Web服务。为了在CPNs协作模型和业务流程的执行之间建立一座桥梁,给出了基于CPNs从过程模型驱动演绎出一致的BPEL代码的方法。首先,把CPNs协作模型转换为结构工作流网模型;然后,把工作流网模转换为BPEL代码,最后,通过电话机故障修理的案例研究,说明了算法的有效性。     

An architecture modeling framework for probabilistic prediction

In the design phase of business and IT system development, it is desirable to predict the properties of the system-to-be. A number of formalisms to assess qualities such as performance, reliability and security have therefore previously been proposed. However, existing prediction systems do not allow the modeler to express uncertainty with respect to the design of the considered system. Yet, in contemporary business, the high rate of change in the environment leads to uncertainties about present and future characteristics of the system, so significant that ignoring them becomes problematic. In this paper, we propose a formalism, the Predictive, Probabilistic Architecture Modeling Framework (P²AMF), capable of advanced and probabilistically sound reasoning about business and IT architecture models, given in the form of Unified Modeling Language class and object diagrams. The proposed formalism is based on the Object Constraint Language (OCL). To OCL, P²AMF adds a probabilistic inference mechanism. The paper introduces P²AMF, describes its use for system property prediction and assessment and proposes an algorithm for probabilistic inference.     

基于UML系统分析的关系数据库设计

针对系统开发中业务分析、软件开发与数据库开发之间的协同问题，从统一建模语言（Unified Modeling Language，UML）系统分析的角度，提出业务建模、系统分析与设计、模型映射构成的面向对象的关系数据库设计流程，通过UML可视化模型，实现软件开发周期中的需求统一．     

Discovery and analysis of e-mail-driven business processes

E-mail is used as the primary tool for business communication and collaboration. This paper presents a novel e-mail interaction mining method to discover and analyze e-mail-driven business processes. An e-mail-driven business process is perceived as a human collaboration process that consists of interactions between people who may each play different roles. The notion of message threads (i.e. sets of e-mail messages that are replies to each other) is used as the fundamental building block to construct the interactions in the e-mail-driven business process. The proposed method adopts an interaction-centric business process modeling language to visualize the discovered e-mail-driven business process. The method identifies message threads from an e-mail archive, and constructs an interaction-centric process model based on the temporal order and similarity of the threads. Process-related information is extracted from e-mail header fields. A software tool, named E-mail Interaction Miner, implements the proposed method. A case study is used to apply and evaluate the method on a set of e-mails collected from a Dutch gas transport company. The evaluation results are discussed. These results comprise business process improvement opportunities for the case organization, and contributions to theory and language development.     

A New Approach Towards Procurement of Software Models Via Distributed Business Models

Nowadays the distributive nature of many modern enterprises leads business strategists to look forward to new solutions which could take over this new requirement. The ever-increasing surge of e-business trend is another driving force for dealing with new distributed environment in addition to the serious need for core software components. On the other hand, the major role of these information systems in survival of business while tight competition exists is a facet which reveals another requirement focused on the robust relationship of business and the system(s) maintaining it. In this paper we aim to introduce a new approach to procure software models by means of the underlying business model. Since the introduction of UML as the latest OMG standard modeling language in 1997, a few researches have been done to use UML as a tool for business modeling. Unfortunately, recent trends are still immature and confronted with shortages and deficiencies. BSUP, which stands for Business to Software Unified Process, is our new approach to fulfill such a goal by means of a proprietary extension of UML. In this work, while analyzing the issues causing problems in the existing methods, we show how BSUP successfully resolves a few of such problems. Issues such as distributed processes, uncertainty in values and associations, ambiguity in the model, lack of precisely defined semantics and etc. may successfully be addressed and resolved. The BSUP is an ongoing work currently being evaluated in Paxan Corp,¹ a mid-scale industrial environment and a leading manufacturer of cosmetics and detergent products in the region. So far a few encouraging benefits have been revealed as briefly discussed within this paper.     

跨组织多业务事务建模与验证方法

面向服务的事务处理是保障业务交互和协作正确性的关键技术.针对跨组织多业务流程,提供了一种支持多业务事务建模与验证的方法.在建模方法上,对Pi-演算扩展了事务语义,将进程间的动作交互与跨组织膜活动相关联来刻画多业务事务协调行为.在验证过程中,基于等价自动机转换思路集成现有模型检验技术,验证多业务事务是否满足人们需要的各种性质.实验结果表明,该建模与验证方法能够有效地保障多业务流程在设计与实现过程中的正确性.     

协同业务过程与需求的建模及一致性验证

自底向上建模方法中的业务过程由不同组织开发,无法在设计阶段就预见其潜在的所有交互可能.因此,在实际协作中,建立协同业务过程可能与参与组织期望的系统功能和特性不一致.为此,提出一种协同业务过程与需求的建模及一致性验证方法.首先,引入并发操作符,提供一种通过组合参与组织的业务过程构建协同业务过程方法;然后,扩展目标模型,提出需求依赖图来建模参与组织的需求;最后,基于模型检测技术提出协同业务过程与需求一致性检测方法.重点解决了将协同业务过程转换为表达能力相同FSP进程规约和参与组织需求转换为LTL公式这两个问题.通过对典型的协同业务过程集阐述提出方法的有效性,并对方法分析效率进行评价,结果表明：相对已有工作,提出方法能够更加有效地用于协同业务过程与需求的一致性分析.     

Cognitive effectiveness of visual instructional design languages

The introduction of learning technologies into education is making the design of courses and instructional materials an increasingly complex task. Instructional design languages are identified as conceptual tools for achieving more standardized and, at the same time, more creative design solutions, as well as enhancing communication and transparency in the design process. In this article we discuss differences in cognitive aspects of three visual instructional design languages (E²ML, PoEML, coUML), based on user evaluation. Cognitive aspects are of relevance for learning a design language, creating models with it, and understanding models created using it. The findings should enable language constructors to improve the usability of visual instructional design languages in the future. The paper concludes with directions with regard to how future research on visual instructional design languages could strengthen their value and enhance their actual use by educators and designers by synthesizing existing efforts into a unified modeling approach for VIDLs.     

Geometry-based semantic ID for persistent and interoperable reference in feature-based parametric modeling

In current feature-based parametric design systems, the reusability principle is not fully supported as it was expected. Unpredictability and ambiguity of models often happen during design modification within one system as well as among different systems. This reference deficiency significantly reduces the power of feature-based parametric modeling, where geometry re-evaluation generates unexpected shapes. In this paper, a sufficient condition of B-Rep variance based on geometry continuity in parametric complex Euclidean (P^pC³) space is proposed. Shape and relation parameters are differentiated in P^pC³, thus parametric family can be defined. A semantic id scheme based on continuity of geometry is developed to solve the problem of naming persistency and to improve interoperability of CAD feature modeling. Hierarchical namespaces localize entity creation and identification. All geometric and topological entities are referred uniformly based on surface ids, and topology semantics is retained in id itself.     

一个面向工作流的过程建模平台的实现

在工作流系统中，对业务过程的抽象需要过程描述语言和过程建模工具的支持。介绍了一种过程描述语言的基本结构，基于这种描述语言的过程建模平台的系统设计、应用实例以及发展方向。     

Verifying workflow processes: a transformation-based approach

Workflow modeling is a challenging activity and designers are likely to introduce errors, especially in complex industrial processes. Effective process verification is essential at design time because the cost of fixing errors during runtime is substantially higher. However, most user-oriented workflow modeling languages lack formal semantics that hinders such verification. In this paper, we propose a generic approach based on the model transformation to verify workflow processes. The model transformation includes two steps: first, it formalizes the desirable semantics of each modeling element; secondly, it translates a workflow process with clear semantics to an equivalent Petri net. Thus, we can verify the original workflow process using existing Petri net theory and analysis tools. As a comprehensive case study, verifying workflow processes in an industrial modeling language (TiPLM) is presented. Experimental evaluations on verifying real-world business processes validate our approach.     

Value-based requirements engineering: exploring innovative e-commerce ideas

Innovative e-commerce ideas are characterised by commercial products yet unknown to the market, enabled by information technology such as the Internet and technologies on top of it. How to develop such products is hardly known. We propose an interdisciplinary approach, e ³ -value, to explore an innovative e-commerce idea with the aim of understanding such an idea thoroughly and evaluating it for potential profitability. Our methodology exploits a requirements engineering way of working, but employs concepts and terminology from business science, marketing and axiology. It shows how to model business requirements and improve business–IT alignment, in sophisticated multi-actor value constellations that are common in electronic commerce. In addition to the e ³ -value approach methodology, we also present the action research-based development of our methodology, by using one of the longitudinal projects we carried out in the field of online news article provisioning.     

Kernel price pattern trading

A new approach to algorithmic trading system development is presented. This approach, Kernel Price Pattern Trading (KPPT _P ), allows the practitioner to link the performance of a learned classifier (that predicts the occurrence of the price pattern P) to the profitability of the system. A positive definite kernel based distance that tries to capture the drivers of the process of price patterns formation and some results about the profitability of the system are also presented.     

Development and commercialization of the MiniBlock synthesizer family: a historical case study

The MiniBlock synthesizer family began as an internal development project meant to meet an immediate technology need within a large pharmaceutical company (BMS). By adopting a rapid iterative design philosophy, the team was able to meet immediate business production needs while simultaneously driving toward a final design that was optimized for the intended application—in this case, parallel synthesis. The burden of maintaining production and support for a proprietary internal technology led BMS to seek a commercial partner (MT). After commercialization, the partners worked together to extend the product line. MT focused on new features to appeal to a wider user base (larger volume formats, temperature control and agitation accessories, and so on), while BMS focused on optimizing a companion reactor for an entirely new application (the XT-Plus).The result of this uncommon collaboration is that the MiniBlock and XT families are now used by almost every one of the top 30 major pharmaceutical companies in the world. Many companies in more than 20 countries have based their compound synthesis workflow around these platforms, confirming the applicability of the reaction blocks beyond the confines of a single pharmaceutical company. The collaboration and the reactor have been acknowledged with several industry awards including the 1999 ALA Achievement Award from the Association for Laboratory Automation and the 2003 Thomas Alva Edison Patent Award from the Research and Development Council of New Jersey. In addition, they have been featured in a number of industry trade publications.^{73, 74, 75, 76 and 77} We believe that this collaboration may be a useful model for future technology innovation and adoption in the laboratory environment.     

Repository support for multi-perspective requirements engineering

Relationships among different modeling perspectives have been systematically investigated focusing either on given notations (e.g. UML) or on domain reference models (e.g. ARIS/SAP). In contrast, many successful informal methods for business analysis and requirements engineering (e.g. JAD) emphasize team negotiation, goal orientation and flexibility of modeling notations. This paper addresses the question how much formal and computerized support can be provided in such settings without destroying their creative tenor. Our solution is based on a novel modeling language, M-Telos, that integrates the adaptability and analysis advantages of the logic-based meta modeling language Telos with a module concept covering the structuring mechanisms of scalable software architectures. It comprises four components: (1) A modular conceptual modeling formalism organizes individual perspectives and their interrelationships. (2) Perspective schemata are linked to a conceptual meta meta model of shared domain terms, thus giving the architecture a semantic meaning and enabling adaptability and extensibility of the network of perspectives. (3) Inconsistency management across perspectives is handled in a goal-oriented manner, by formalizing analysis goals as meta rules which are automatically customized to perspective schemata. (4) Continuous incremental maintenance of inconsistency information is provided by exploiting recent view maintenance techniques from deductive databases. The approach has been implemented as an extension to the ConceptBase³ meta database management system and has been applied in a number of real-world requirements engineering projects.     

Agile business process development: why,how and when—applying Nonaka’s theory of knowledge transformation to business process development

The traditional way of business process development is via creating a detailed model of a business process in question, acquiring an IT-system to support it, and then implementing it in the organizational practice. Acquiring a system can be done via designing and manufacturing it by the business itself, or via commissioning it to somebody else. Alternatively, a generic system can be bought and configured according to the business process model created. The traditional approach has a number of risks that become visible only during the latest phase of introducing the system in the organizational practice, e.g., when it becomes clear that the system does not fit the business and/or people who work in it. These risks could be mitigated by using an agile approach to the development of business processes. In agile approach: (a) the phases of process modeling, IT-system design, and manufacturing are merged into one, and (b) instead of using one big cycle, a series of smaller development cycles is used. The paper discusses what is needed to implement the agile approach, and in which business situations the agile approach is the most appropriate. Examples of tools to support agile development are presented and analyzed. The results presented in the paper have been achieved based on the knowledge transformation perspective along the lines suggested by Nonaka in SECI model. The modification of this model has been used to understand the risks and requirements connected to a particular process development strategy.     

Adaptive integration activity management for on demand business process collaboration

Today businesses are interacting and collaborating more often in the context of a business value chain involving a variety of partners to deliver products and services. Business to business (B2B) connectivity, Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) and general business collaboration processes are becoming more critical in operating and managing efficient enterprises. The required level of inter and intra enterprise integration is generally a large undertaking and involves substantial development and customization efforts. In this paper, we propose an adaptive integration activity management approach based on web services technologies to reduce code changes associated with business process integration in a distributed collaboration environment. Specifically, we present a concept of activity chain to capture non-deterministic process flows as well as deterministic process flows in a uniform manner. Then an Activity Ontology is introduced to capture the integration requirements that include adaptation behaviors, action properties, business rules, and access control policy references. The unique ontology representation and management of the integration activities provides a uniform way to integrate additional internal and external business applications to reduce the need for pre-defined and hard-wired integration methods and to minimize code changes to existing components in an existing business collaboration and integration (B2B/EAI) infrastructure. In addition, a Petri-Net modeling exercise of the proposed integration activity management is performed to help better understand the actual system and improve the system design beforehand.