Descriptive business process models at run-time

Today's competitive markets require organisations to react proactively to changes in their environment if financial and legal consequences are to be avoided. Since business processes are elementary parts of modern organisations they are also required to efficiently adapt to these changes in quick and flexible ways. This requirement demands a more dynamic handling of business processes, i.e. treating business processes as run-time artefacts rather than design-time artefacts. One general approach to address this problem is provided by the community of [email protected], which promotes methodologies concerned with self-adaptive systems where models reflect the system's current state at any point in time and allow immediate reasoning and adaptation mechanisms. However, in contrast to common self-adaptive systems the domain of business processes features two additional challenges: (i) a bigger than usual abstraction gap between the business process models and the actual run-time information of the enterprise system and (ii) the possibility of run-time deviations from the planned models. Developing an understanding of such processes is a crucial necessity in order to optimise business processes and dynamically adapt to changing demands. This thesis explores the potential of adopting and enhancing principles and mechanisms from the [email protected] domain to the business process domain for the purpose of run-time reasoning, i.e. investigating the potential role of Descriptive Business Process Models at Run-time (DBPMRTs) in the business process management domain. The DBPMRT is a model describing the enterprise system at run-time and thus enabling higher-level reasoning on the as-is state. Along with the specification of the DBPMRT, algorithms and an overall framework are proposed to establish and maintain a causal link from the enterprise system to the DBPMRT at run-time. Furthermore, it is shown that proactive higher-level reasoning on a DBPMRT in the form of performance prediction allows for more accurate results. By taking these steps the thesis addresses general challenges of business process management, e.g. dealing with frequently changing processes and shortening the business process life cycle. At the same time this thesis contributes to research in [email protected] by providing a complex real-world use case as well as a reference approach for dealing with volatile [email protected] of a higher abstraction level

Improving data preparation for the application of process mining

Immersed in what is already known as the fourth industrial revolution, automation and data exchange are taking on a particularly relevant role in complex environments, such as industrial manufacturing environments or logistics. This digitisation and transition to the Industry 4.0 paradigm is causing experts to start analysing business processes from other perspectives. Consequently, where management and business intelligence used to dominate, process mining appears as a link, trying to build a bridge between both disciplines to unite and improve them. This new perspective on process analysis helps to improve strategic decision making and competitive capabilities. Process mining brings together data and process perspectives in a single discipline that covers the entire spectrum of process management. Through process mining, and based on observations of their actual operations, organisations can understand the state of their operations, detect deviations, and improve their performance based on what they observe. In this way, process mining is an ally, occupying a large part of current academic and industrial research. However, although this discipline is receiving more and more attention, it presents severe application problems when it is implemented in real environments. The variety of input data in terms of form, content, semantics, and levels of abstraction makes the execution of process mining tasks in industry an iterative, tedious, and manual process, requiring multidisciplinary experts with extensive knowledge of the domain, process management, and data processing. Currently, although there are numerous academic proposals, there are no industrial solutions capable of automating these tasks. For this reason, in this thesis by compendium we address the problem of improving business processes in complex environments thanks to the study of the state-of-the-art and a set of proposals that improve relevant aspects in the life cycle of processes, from the creation of logs, log preparation, process quality assessment, and improvement of business processes. Firstly, for this thesis, a systematic study of the literature was carried out in order to gain an in-depth knowledge of the state-of-the-art in this field, as well as the different challenges faced by this discipline. This in-depth analysis has allowed us to detect a number of challenges that have not been addressed or received insufficient attention, of which three have been selected and presented as the objectives of this thesis. The first challenge is related to the assessment of the quality of input data, known as event logs, since the requeriment of the application of techniques for improving the event log must be based on the level of quality of the initial data, which is why this thesis presents a methodology and a set of metrics that support the expert in selecting which technique to apply to the data according to the quality estimation at each moment, another challenge obtained as a result of our analysis of the literature. Likewise, the use of a set of metrics to evaluate the quality of the resulting process models is also proposed, with the aim of assessing whether improvement in the quality of the input data has a direct impact on the final results. The second challenge identified is the need to improve the input data used in the analysis of business processes. As in any data-driven discipline, the quality of the results strongly depends on the quality of the input data, so the second challenge to be addressed is the improvement of the preparation of event logs. The contribution in this area is the application of natural language processing techniques to relabel activities from textual descriptions of process activities, as well as the application of clustering techniques to help simplify the results, generating more understandable models from a human point of view. Finally, the third challenge detected is related to the process optimisation, so we contribute with an approach for the optimisation of resources associated with business processes, which, through the inclusion of decision-making in the creation of flexible processes, enables significant cost reductions. Furthermore, all the proposals made in this thesis are validated and designed in collaboration with experts from different fields of industry and have been evaluated through real case studies in public and private projects in collaboration with the aeronautical industry and the logistics sector

Knowledge-base and techniques for effective service-oriented programming & management of hybrid processes

Recent advances in Web 2.0, SOA, crowd-sourcing, social and collaboration technologies, as well as cloud-computing, have truly transformed the Internet into a global development and deployment platform. As a result, developers have been presented with ubiquitous access to countless Web-services, resources and tools. However, while enabling tremendous automation and reuse opportunities, new productivity challenges have also emerged: The exploitation of services and resources nonetheless requires skilled programmers and a development-centric approach; it is thus inevitably susceptible to the same repetitive, error-prone and time consuming integration work each time a developer integrates a new API. Business Process Management on the other hand were proposed to support service-based integration. It provided the benefit of automation and modelling, which appealed to non-technical domain-experts. The problem however: it proves too rigid for unstructured processes. Thus, without this level of support, building new application either requires extensive manual programming or resorting to homebrew solutions. Alternatively, with the proliferation of SaaS, various such tools could be used for independent portions of the overall process - although this either presupposes conforming to the in-built process, or results in "shadow processes" via use of e-mail or the like, in order to exchange information and share decisions. There has therefore been an inevitable gap in technological support between structured and unstructured processes. To address these challenges, this thesis deals with transitioning process-support from structured to unstructured. We have been motivated to harness the foundational capabilities of BPM for its application to unstructured processes. We propose to achieve this by: First, addressing the productivity challenges of Web-services integration - simplifying this process - whilst encouraging an incremental curation and collective reuse approach. We then extend this to propose an innovative Hybrid-Process Management Platform that holistically combines structured, semi-structured and unstructured activities, based on a unified task-model that encapsulates a spectrum of process specificity. We have thus aimed to bridge the current lacking technology gap. The approach presented has been exposed as service-based libraries and tools. Whereby, we have devised several use-case scenarios and conducted user-studies in order to evaluate the overall effectiveness of our proposed work

A Formal Semantics of Time Patterns for Process-aware Information Systems

Companies increasingly adopt process-aware information systems (PAISs) to coordinate, monitor and evolve their business processes. Although the proper handling of temporal constraints (e.g., deadlines and minimum time lags between activities) is crucial in many application domains, existing PAISs vary significantly regarding their support of the temporal perspective of business processes. Both the formal specification and operational support of temporal constraints constitute fundamental challenges in this context. In previous work, we introduced time patterns facilitating the comparison of PAISs in respect to their support of the temporal perspective and provided empirical evidence for them. To avoid ambiguities and to ease the use as well as implementation of the time patterns, this paper formally defines their semantics. To enable pattern use in a wide range of process modeling languages and pattern integration with existing PAISs, this semantics is expressed independent of a particular process meta model. Altogether, the presented pattern formalization will foster the integration of the temporal perspective in PAISs

Process time patterns: A formal foundation

Companies increasingly adopt process-aware information systems (PAISs) to model, execute, monitor, and evolve their business processes. Though the handling of temporal constraints (e.g., deadlines or time lags between activities) is crucial for the proper support of business processes, existing PAISs vary significantly regarding the support of the temporal perspective. Both the formal specification and the operational support of temporal constraints constitute fundamental challenges in this context. In previous work, we introduced process time patterns, which facilitate the comparison and evaluation of PAISs in respect to their support of the temporal perspective. Furthermore, we provided empirical evidence for these time patterns. To avoid ambiguities and to ease the use as well as the implementation of the time patterns, this paper formally defines their semantics. To additionally foster the use of the patterns for a wide range of process modeling languages and to enable pattern integration with existing PAISs, the proposed semantics are expressed independently of a particular process meta model. Altogether, the presented pattern formalization will be fundamental for introducing the temporal perspective in PAISs

Validation and Evaluation

In this technical report, we present prototypical implementations of innovative tools and methods for personalized and contextualized (multimedia) search, collaborative ontology evolution, ontology evaluation and cost models, and dynamic access and trends in distributed (semantic) knowledge, developed according to the working plan outlined in Technical Report TR-B-12-04. The prototypes complete the next milestone on the path to an integral Corporate Semantic Web architecture based on the three pillars Corporate Ontology Engineering, Corporate Semantic Collaboration, and Corporate Semantic Search, as envisioned in TR-B-08-09

Some resonances between Eastern thought and Integral Biomathics in the framework of the WLIMES formalism for modelling living systems

Forty-two years ago, Capra published “The Tao of Physics” (Capra, 1975). In this book (page 17) he writes: “The exploration of the atomic and subatomic world in the twentieth century has …. necessitated a radical revision of many of our basic concepts” and that, unlike ‘classical’ physics, the sub-atomic and quantum “modern physics” shows resonances with Eastern thoughts and “leads us to a view of the world which is very similar to the views held by mystics of all ages and traditions.“ This article stresses an analogous situation in biology with respect to a new theoretical approach for studying living systems, Integral Biomathics (IB), which also exhibits some resonances with Eastern thought. Stepping on earlier research in cybernetics1 and theoretical biology,2 IB has been developed since 2011 by over 100 scientists from a number of disciplines who have been exploring a substantial set of theoretical frameworks. From that effort, the need for a robust core model utilizing advanced mathematics and computation adequate for understanding the behavior of organisms as dynamic wholes was identified. At this end, the authors of this article have proposed WLIMES (Ehresmann and Simeonov, 2012), a formal theory for modeling living systems integrating both the Memory Evolutive Systems (Ehresmann and Vanbremeersch, 2007) and the Wandering Logic Intelligence (Simeonov, 2002b). Its principles will be recalled here with respect to their resonances to Eastern thought

CHOReOS perspective on the Future Internet and initial conceptual model (D1.2)

The D1.2 deliverable outlines the CHOReOS perspective on the Future Internet and its conceptualization. In particular, the deliverable focuses on: - Definition of the Future Internet and related Future Internet of Services and (Smart) Things, as considered within CHOReOS, further stressing the many dimensions underpinning the Ultra-Large Scale of the Future Internet; - Definition of the initial conceptual model of the CHOReOS Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) for the Future Internet, identifying the impact of the ULS dimensions upon the traditional SOA paradigms and associated infrastructure

Eine Analyse der Literatur zur Referenzmodellierung im Geschäftsprozessmanagement unter Berücksichtigung quantitativer Methoden

Im Geschäftsprozessmanagement nimmt die Referenzmodellierung bei der Gestaltung von Geschäftsprozessen eine große Bedeutung ein, da auf bereits existierende Modelle zurückgegriffen werden kann. So kann Zeit für die Entwicklung der Prozesse eingespart und von bereits etabliertem Wissen profitiert werden. Die vorliegende Masterarbeit analysiert die Literatur im Bereich der Referenzmodellierung im Geschäftsprozessmanagement unter Berücksichtigung quantitativer Methoden. Es werden insbesondere die Forschungsrichtungen bzw. Themenbereiche, Entwicklungen und der aktuelle Stand der Literatur in diesem Bereich ermittelt. Zunächst werden deutsch- und englischsprachige Artikel nach bestimmten Kriterien ausgewählt. Anschließend folgt eine quantitativ orientierte Analyse der Literatur. Dabei kommt die Latente Semantische Analyse zum Einsatz, mit deren Hilfe Themenbereiche ermittelt werden und die einzelnen Beiträge den ermittelten Themenbereichen zugeordnet werden können. Darüber hinaus wird die Entwicklung der Anzahl der Artikel in den Themenbereichen im Zeitverlauf betrachtet und auf Unterschiede zwischen der deutsch- und englischsprachigen Literatur eingegangen. In der darauf folgenden qualitativ orientierten Analyse werden die Artikel der einzelnen Themenbereiche inhaltlich analysiert und der aktuelle Stand der Forschung dargestellt. Nicht zuletzt werden die Ergebnisse der qualitativen Analyse in Bezug zu den Ergebnissen der quantitativen Analyse gesetzt