Semantic Business Process Modeling

This book presents a process-oriented business modeling framework based on semantic technologies. The framework consists of modeling languages, methods, and tools that allow for semantic modeling of business motivation, business policies and rules, and business processes. Quality of the proposed modeling framework is evaluated based on the modeling content of SAP Solution Composer and several real-world business scenarios

Method and Instruments for Modeling Integrated Knowledge

MIMIK (Method and Instruments for Modeling Integrated Knowledge) is a set of tools used to formalize and represent knowledge within organizations. It furthermore supports knowledge creation and sharing within communities of interest or communities of practice. In this paper we show that MIMIK is based on a model theory approach and builds on other existing methods and techniques. We also explain how to use the method and its instruments in order to model strategic objectives, processes, knowledge, and roles found within an organization, as well as relations existing between these elements. Indeed MIMIK provides eight types of models in order to describe what is commonly called know-how, know-why and know-what; it uses matrices in order to formally and semantically link strategic objectives, knowledge and actors. We close this paper with a presentation of a prototype we built in order to demonstrate a technical architecture allowing for knowledge creation, formalization and sharing.knowledge modelling; process modelling; public administration; methodology; knowledge sharing; RSS

Concpetual Design of WWW Based Information Systems

Today, companies and their information systems are facing a very dynamic and fast changing environment. Fast changing demands require varying information in varying places. Users must find relevant information in a fast and perspicuous way. Thus, information systems both have to be flexible and clearly structured to fulfill these requirements and be able to handle the increasing amount of information efficiently. WWW-based information systems provide flexibility as they separate content, layout and navigation. However, several conceptual shortcomings prevent the Web from being a more productive and efficient resource of information today. Several technical enhancements (e.g. the semantic web) have been made in order to solve these problems. However, a theoretically proved and easy to use modeling method for WWW-based information systems is still missing. Our modeling method allows modeling these information systems on a conceptual level by abstracting from technical details. By this, meaningful navigation structures can be achieved with great clarity. In this paper we will develop this method using a meta-model based approach

Ontological Foundations of Representational Information Systems

A research program around the idea that information systems represent real-world systems was started almost twenty years ago. The program started by Wand and Weber is still going strong with a significant amount of research inspired by them and is one of the few instances incremental foundational research in Information Systems. Much of this research is being undertaken in Australia, and its influence has spread far and wide. Wand and Weber have used ontology, a discipline with roots in two thousand years of philosophy, to drive empirical work into how well information systems represent reality. In this paper the inspiration and progress of the program of research followed over the past two decades is described. The research program has recently progressed from its roots examining information systems development to examine enterprise systems and other package solutions. Further, it is beginning now to more fully use the depth of ontological theory available. However, there are challenges in how Bunge’s ontology has been used and opportunities for using complementary ontologies and for different conceptualisations of information systems

Semantic Benchmarking of Process Models - An Ontology-Based Approach

This article suggests an approach which allows the costly analysis of processes (e.g., in serviceoriented architectures) for benchmarking to be partially automated, so that the performance indicators, as well as qualitative differences between processes become apparent. The approach is based on using appropriate ontologies, which make the process models both syntactically and semantically comparable. In this article, we present a conceptual model for this new approach to process benchmarking, a framework, as well as a software prototype for analyzing and comparing individual process models. We provide an overview of our multi-method evaluation methodology and delineate the technical, conceptual, and economic evaluation perspectives with their respective outcomes. This analysis allowed us to determine whether our approach is generally suitable for generating novel and useful information on different process models that describe the same problem domain

Representing Organizational Structures in Enterprise Architecture: an Ontology-based Approach

Enterprise Architecture (EA) promotes the establishment of a holistic view of the structure and way of working of an organization. One of the aspects covered in EA is associated with the organizations active structure, which concerns who undertakes organizational activities. Several approaches have been proposed in order to provide a means for representing enterprise architecture, among which ARIS, RM-ODP, UPDM and ArchiMate. Despite the acceptance by the community, existing approaches focus on different purposes, have limitations on their conceptual scopes and some have no real world semantics well-defined. Besides modeling approaches, many ontology approaches have been proposed in order to describe the active structure domain, including the ontologies in the SUPER Project, TOVE, Enterprise Ontology and W3C Org Ontology. Although specified for semantic grounding and meaning negotiation, some of proposed approaches have specific purposes and limited coverage. In addition, some of them are not defined using formal languages and others are specified using languages without well-defined semantics. This work presents a well-founded reference ontology for the organizational domain. The organizational reference ontology presented covers the basic aspects discussed in the organizational literature, such as division of labor, social relations and classification of structuring units. Further, it also encompasses the organizational aspects defined in existing approaches, both modeling and ontology approaches. The resulting ontology is specified in OntoUML and extends the social concepts of UFO-C

Method and Instruments for Modeling Integrated Knowledge

International audienceMIMIK (Method and Instruments for Modeling Integrated Knowledge) is a set of tools used to formalize and represent knowledge within organizations. It furthermore supports knowledge creation and sharing within communities of interest or communities of practice. In this paper we show that MIMIK is based on a model theory approach and builds on other existing methods and techniques. We also explain how to use the method and its instruments in order to model strategic objectives, processes, knowledge, and roles found within an organization, as well as relations existing between these elements. Indeed MIMIK provides eight types of models in order to describe what is commonly called know-how, know-why and know-what; it uses matrices in order to formally and semantically link strategic objectives, knowledge and actors. We close this paper with a presentation of a prototype we built in order to demonstrate a technical architecture allowing for knowledge creation, formalization and sharing

Towards a new approach for enterprise integration : the semantic modeling approach

Manufacturing today has become a matter of the effective and efficient application of information technology and knowledge engineering. Manufacturing firms’ success depends to a great extent on information technology, which emphasizes the integration of the information systems used by a manufacturing enterprise. This integration is also called enterprise application integration (here the term application means information systems or software systems). The methodology for enterprise application integration, in particular enterprise application integration automation, has been studied for at least a decade; however, no satisfactory solution has been found. Enterprise application integration is becoming even more difficult due to the explosive growth of various information systems as a result of ever increasing competition in the software market. This thesis aims to provide a novel solution to enterprise application integration. The semantic data model concept that evolved in database technology is revisited and applied to enterprise application integration. This has led to two novel ideas developed in this thesis. First, an ontology of an enterprise with five levels (following the data abstraction: generalization/specialization) is proposed and represented using unified modeling language. Second, both the ontology for the enterprise functions and the ontology for the enterprise applications are modeled to allow automatic processing of information back and forth between these two domains. The approach with these novel ideas is called the enterprise semantic model approach. The thesis presents a detailed description of the enterprise semantic model approach, including the fundamental rationale behind the enterprise semantic model, the ontology of enterprises with levels, and a systematic way towards the construction of a particular enterprise semantic model for a company. A case study is provided to illustrate how the approach works and to show the high potential of solving the existing problems within enterprise application integration