From process logic to business logic - A cognitive approach to business process management

The unpredictability of business activities means that business process management should provide a way to adapt to change. The traditional workflow approach, based on predefined process logic, offers little support for today's complex and dynamic business environment. Therefore, a cognitive approach is proposed to help manage complex business activities, based on continuous awareness of situations and real-time decisions on activities. In this approach, the business environment is seen as capturing events that occurred and the state of tasks and resources; business logic involving process routing, operational constraints, exception handling and business strategy is used to determine which actions are appropriate for the current situation. By extending process management from process logic to business logic, the methodology offers flexibility, agility and adaptability in complex business process management. © 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.postprin

A Distributed Workflow Platform for Simulation

Best Paper AwardInternational audienceThis paper presents an approach to design, implement and deploy a simulation platform based on distributed workflows. It supports the smooth integration of existing software, e.g. Matlab, Scilab, Python, OpenFOAM, Paraview and user-defined programs. The contribution of the paper is a new feature which supports application-level fault-tolerance and exception-handling, i.e., resilience.Cet article présente une approche pour concevoir, réaliser et déployer une plateforme de simulation basée sur les workflows distribués. Elle permet l'intégration de logiciels existant, par exemple Matlab, Scilab, Python, OpenFOAM, Paraview et de programmes définis par les utilisateurs. La contribution est ici le support de la tolérance aux pannes par les applications et le traitement des exceptions, c-à-d la résilience

Information technology and performance management for build-to-order supply chains

En las siguientes líneas se plantea un artículo de reflexión que tiene en cuenta parte del marco teórico que sustenta la investigación titulada “Prácticas pedagógicas que promueven la competencia argumentativa escrita (CAE) en niños campesinos de los grados 4° y 5° del Centro Educativo Municipal La Caldera, Sede Principal de Pasto”, desarrollada en el año 2012. En él se contemplan los aportes de las ciencias del lenguaje y la comunicación, la teoría de la argumentación, la didáctica de la lengua escrita y los géneros discursivos, que dan cuenta de la necesidad de desarrollar la capacidad crítica en los estudiantes a través de la argumentación, lo cual implica transformar las prácticas pedagógicas para que se alejen de la transmisión de conocimientos y den paso a la comunicación, para que la palabra escrita sea apropiada de manera significativa

Pension supervision : understanding international practice and country context

This paper proposes an approach to classifying and measuring the primary elements of private pension supervision, and undertakes an evaluation using a representative set of countries. The analysis considers how supervision methods and style relate to the basic design of pension systems, and the broader environment in which they operate. Supervisory systems are shown to include six main elements, with considerable variation among systems in the scope, and intensity of activities within each element. The analysis concludes that there are discernible relationships between supervisory methods, and the context in which they are applied. The level of economic development, depth of capital markets, underlying legal framework presence of mandates, and number of funds supervised are found to be associated with depth, and intensity of supervision activities. These findings support the principle that the organization, and management of private pension supervision is significantly derived from the context, and environment in which these systems operate.

Agent and cyber-physical system based self-organizing and self-adaptive intelligent shopfloor

The increasing demand of customized production results in huge challenges to the traditional manufacturing systems. In order to allocate resources timely according to the production requirements and to reduce disturbances, a framework for the future intelligent shopfloor is proposed in this paper. The framework consists of three primary models, namely the model of smart machine agent, the self-organizing model, and the self-adaptive model. A cyber-physical system for manufacturing shopfloor based on the multiagent technology is developed to realize the above-mentioned function models. Gray relational analysis and the hierarchy conflict resolution methods were applied to achieve the self-organizing and self-adaptive capabilities, thereby improving the reconfigurability and responsiveness of the shopfloor. A prototype system is developed, which has the adequate flexibility and robustness to configure resources and to deal with disturbances effectively. This research provides a feasible method for designing an autonomous factory with exception-handling capabilities

Knowledge-Intensive Processes: Characteristics, Requirements and Analysis of Contemporary Approaches

Engineering of knowledge-intensive processes (KiPs) is far from being mastered, since they are genuinely knowledge- and data-centric, and require substantial flexibility, at both design- and run-time. In this work, starting from a scientific literature analysis in the area of KiPs and from three real-world domains and application scenarios, we provide a precise characterization of KiPs. Furthermore, we devise some general requirements related to KiPs management and execution. Such requirements contribute to the definition of an evaluation framework to assess current system support for KiPs. To this end, we present a critical analysis on a number of existing process-oriented approaches by discussing their efficacy against the requirements

The Value of User-Visible Internet Cryptography

Cryptographic mechanisms are used in a wide range of applications, including email clients, web browsers, document and asset management systems, where typical users are not cryptography experts. A number of empirical studies have demonstrated that explicit, user-visible cryptographic mechanisms are not widely used by non-expert users, and as a result arguments have been made that cryptographic mechanisms need to be better hidden or embedded in end-user processes and tools. Other mechanisms, such as HTTPS, have cryptography built-in and only become visible to the user when a dialogue appears due to a (potential) problem. This paper surveys deployed and potential technologies in use, examines the social and legal context of broad classes of users, and from there, assesses the value and issues for those users