Adaptive Process Management in Cyber-Physical Domains

The increasing application of process-oriented approaches in new challenging cyber-physical domains beyond business computing (e.g., personalized healthcare, emergency management, factories of the future, home automation, etc.) has led to reconsider the level of flexibility and support required to manage complex processes in such domains. A cyber-physical domain is characterized by the presence of a cyber-physical system coordinating heterogeneous ICT components (PCs, smartphones, sensors, actuators) and involving real world entities (humans, machines, agents, robots, etc.) that perform complex tasks in the “physical” real world to achieve a common goal. The physical world, however, is not entirely predictable, and processes enacted in cyber-physical domains must be robust to unexpected conditions and adaptable to unanticipated exceptions. This demands a more flexible approach in process design and enactment, recognizing that in real-world environments it is not adequate to assume that all possible recovery activities can be predefined for dealing with the exceptions that can ensue. In this chapter, we tackle the above issue and we propose a general approach, a concrete framework and a process management system implementation, called SmartPM, for automatically adapting processes enacted in cyber-physical domains in case of unanticipated exceptions and exogenous events. The adaptation mechanism provided by SmartPM is based on declarative task specifications, execution monitoring for detecting failures and context changes at run-time, and automated planning techniques to self-repair the running process, without requiring to predefine any specific adaptation policy or exception handler at design-time

Development of an ontology for aerospace engine components degradation in service

This paper presents the development of an ontology for component service degradation. In this paper, degradation mechanisms in gas turbine metallic components are used for a case study to explain how a taxonomy within an ontology can be validated. The validation method used in this paper uses an iterative process and sanity checks. Data extracted from on-demand textual information are filtered and grouped into classes of degradation mechanisms. Various concepts are systematically and hierarchically arranged for use in the service maintenance ontology. The allocation of the mechanisms to the AS-IS ontology presents a robust data collection hub. Data integrity is guaranteed when the TO-BE ontology is introduced to analyse processes relative to various failure events. The initial evaluation reveals improvement in the performance of the TO-BE domain ontology based on iterations and updates with recognised mechanisms. The information extracted and collected is required to improve service k nowledge and performance feedback which are important for service engineers. Existing research areas such as natural language processing, knowledge management, and information extraction were also examined

ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks: a literature review

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation is a complex and vibrant process, one that involves a combination of technological and organizational interactions. Often an ERP implementation project is the single largest IT project that an organization has ever launched and requires a mutual fit of system and organization. Also the concept of an ERP implementation supporting business processes across many different departments is not a generic, rigid and uniform concept and depends on variety of factors. As a result, the issues addressing the ERP implementation process have been one of the major concerns in industry. Therefore ERP implementation receives attention from practitioners and scholars and both, business as well as academic literature is abundant and not always very conclusive or coherent. However, research on ERP systems so far has been mainly focused on diffusion, use and impact issues. Less attention has been given to the methods used during the configuration and the implementation of ERP systems, even though they are commonly used in practice, they still remain largely unexplored and undocumented in Information Systems research. So, the academic relevance of this research is the contribution to the existing body of scientific knowledge. An annotated brief literature review is done in order to evaluate the current state of the existing academic literature. The purpose is to present a systematic overview of relevant ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks as a desire for achieving a better taxonomy of ERP implementation methodologies. This paper is useful to researchers who are interested in ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Results will serve as an input for a classification of the existing ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Also, this paper aims also at the professional ERP community involved in the process of ERP implementation by promoting a better understanding of ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks, its variety and history

Business process management in health care : current challenges and future prospects

The emphasis of performance management in health care is shifting from output or outcome-based to a system-based approach. In particular, clinicians and managers are re-focusing their attention on processes so as to achieve better health system performance, as a reaction to the financial crisis. Health care management is increasingly applying systems thinking and business process management (BPM) as philosophies, which have proved to make a difference in organizational performance and competitiveness to the industry at large. This commentary provides answers to five questions that emerged through a reflective exercise and use of secondary data sources and informal interviews. These questions are intended to contribute toward better understanding of the meaning and application of BPM by scholars and practitioners in health care management. The questions are as follows: What is BPM and is it relevant to health care? Has BPM been extensively applied to health care? Why focus on quality in health care delivery? What are the current challenges of health care and can BPM help? What role BPM will play in future to facilitate effective health care management?peer-reviewe

Industry 4.0: The Future of Indo-German Industrial Collaboration

Industry 4.0 can be described as the fourth industrial revolution, a mega- trend that affects every company around the world. It envisions interconnections and collaboration between people, products and machines within and across enterprises. Why does Industry 4.0 make for an excellent platform for industrial collaboration between India and Germany? The answers lie in economic as well as social factors. Both countries have strengths and weakness and strategic collaboration using the principles of Industry 4.0 can help both increase their industrial output, GDP and make optimal use of human resources. As a global heavy weight in manufacturing and machine export, Germany has a leading position in the development and deployment of Industry 4.0 concepts and technology. However, its IT sector, formed by a labor force of 800,000 employees, is not enough. It needs more professionals to reach its full potential. India, on the other hand, is a global leader in IT and business process outsourcing. But its manufacturing industry needs to grow significantly and compete globally. These realities clearly show the need for Industry 4.0-based collaboration between Germany and India. So how does Industry 4.0 work? In a first step, we look at the technical pers- pective – the vertical and horizontal integration of Industry 4.0 principles in enterprises. Vertical integration refers to operations within Smart Factories and horizontal integration to Smart Supply Chains across businesses. In the second step, we look at manufacturing, chemical industry and the IT sector as potential targets for collaboration between the two countries. We use case studies to illustrate the benefits of the deployment of Industry 4.0. Potential collaboration patterns are discussed along different forms of value chains and along companies’ ability to achieve Industry 4.0 status. We analyse the social impact of Industry 4.0 on India and Germany and find that it works very well in the coming years. Germany with its dwindling labor force might be compensated through the automation. This will ensure continued high productivity levels and rise in GDP. India, on the other hand has a burgeoning labor market, with 10 million workers annually entering the job market. Given that the manufacturing sector will be at par with Europe in efficiency and costs by 2023, pressure on India’s labor force will increase even more. Even its robust IT sector will suffer fewer hires because of increased automation. Rapid development of technologies – for the Internet of Things (IoT) or for connectivity like Low-Power WAN – makes skilling and reskilling of the labor force critical for augmenting smart manufacturing. India and Germany have been collaborating at three levels relevant to Industry 4.0 – industry, government and academics. How can these be taken forward? The two countries have a long history of trade. The Indo-German Chamber of Commerce (IGCC) is the largest such chamber in India and the largest German chamber worldwide. VDMA (Verband Deutscher Maschinen- und Anlagenbau, Mechanical Engineering Industry Association), the largest industry association in Europe, maintains offices in India. Indian key players in IT, in turn, have subsidia- ries in Germany and cooperate with German companies in the area of Industry 4.0. Collaboration is also supported on governmental level. As government initiatives go, India has launched the “Make in India” initiative and the “Make in India Mittelstand! (MIIM)” programme as a part of it. The Indian Government is also supporting “smart manufacturing” initiatives in a major way. Centers of Excellence driven by the industry and academic bodies are being set up. Germany and India have a long tradition of research collaboration as well. Germany is the second scientific collaborator of India and Indian students form the third largest group of foreign students in Germany. German institutions like the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) or the German House for Research and Innovation (DWIH) are working to strengthen ties between the scientific communities of the two countries, and between their academia and industry. What prevents Industry 4.0 from becoming a more widely used technology? Recent surveys in Germany and India show that awareness about Industry 4.0 is still low, especially among small and medium manufacturing enterprises. IT companies, on the other hand, are better prepared. There is a broad demand for support, regarding customtailored solutions, information on case studies and the willingness to participate in Industry 4.0 pilot projects and to engage in its platform and networking activities. We also found similar responses at workshops conducted with Industry 4.0 stakehold- ers in June 2017 in Bangalore and Pune and in an online survey. What can be done to change this? Both countries should strengthen their efforts to create awareness for Industry 4.0, especially among small and medium enterprises. Germany should also put more emphasis on making their Industry 4.0 technology known to the Indian market. India’s IT giants, on the other hand, should make their Industry 4.0 offers more visible to the German market. The governments should support the establishing of joint Industry 4.0 collaboration platforms, centers of excellence and incubators to ease the dissemination of knowledge and technology. On academic level, joint research programs and exchange programs should be set up to foster the skilling of labor force in the deployment of Industry 4.0 methods and technologies

A planning approach to the automated synthesis of template-based process models

The design-time specification of flexible processes can be time-consuming and error-prone, due to the high number of tasks involved and their context-dependent nature. Such processes frequently suffer from potential interference among their constituents, since resources are usually shared by the process participants and it is difficult to foresee all the potential tasks interactions in advance. Concurrent tasks may not be independent from each other (e.g., they could operate on the same data at the same time), resulting in incorrect outcomes. To tackle these issues, we propose an approach for the automated synthesis of a library of template-based process models that achieve goals in dynamic and partially specified environments. The approach is based on a declarative problem definition and partial-order planning algorithms for template generation. The resulting templates guarantee sound concurrency in the execution of their activities and are reusable in a variety of partially specified contextual environments. As running example, a disaster response scenario is given. The approach is backed by a formal model and has been tested in experiment

The Role of Process Knowledge in a Business Process Improvement Methodology

The newly established holistic approach to BPM (Business Process Management) has led to increased recognition of the knowledge and experience people develop, use and share while modelling, executing and improving their business processes. However, this knowledge perspective is often neglected by the current BP improvement methodologies. Our empirical research confirms that business process improvement is, in fact, a complex, knowledge-intensive, collaborative process that consists of a set of coordinated, contextualised knowledge management processes. This paper describes the results of our on-going research project that, among other things, aims to investigate the role of individual and collective process knowledge developed and used in a business process improvement methodology deployed in a real-life, complex organization

Development of a model for Business Process Reengineering: A practical application in a Corporate Center of a Logistics Company

The digital age and the pillars behind the Industry 4.0 are putting growing pressure on companies' Corporate Centers, thus forcing to reshape its business processes in order to increase its efficiency, reduce costs and collaborate more closely with operations. This change is being highly influenced by technology, allowing them to move from transactional and manual-based tasks to focus on higher-value-added tasks. This factors lead the company's Corporate Center under study to start implementing a continuous improvement culture, streamlining its processes and adopting a Business Process Management (BPM) approach. Hence, this works aims to develop and apply a model to reengineer business processes with an end-to-end perspective and with a high focus on efficiency improvement through digitalization. As such, the model being presented is specifically addressed for radical changes in business processes instead of trying to improve the process AS-IS. The result is the application of a model to an end-to-end process in the angel's Corporate Center, that is the starting point to other Business Process Reengineer (BPR) projects within the company, that will allow to acknowledge what are the next steps to improve its efficiency and shifting its mindset to a "Global Corporate Vision", through a strategy that adds more value to the portfolio of businesses so that the whole is worth more than the sum of its parts

Process design principles in service firms: Universal or context dependent? A literature review and new research directions

publication-status: Acceptedtypes: ArticleThis is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis Group in Total Quality Management & Business Excellence on 16/01/2012, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14783363.2011.637797#.VGxftZ1FDcsThe aim of this article is to assess whether process design principles derived from best practices are universally applicable to service organisations or context dependent. This is achieved through a comprehensive review of the business process management (BPM) and operations management (OM) literatures. Our comparison of the existing bodies of knowledge in these disciplines reveals major inconsistencies in how the topic of process design in service environments is addressed. Drawing on the more mature, contingency-oriented OM literature, we challenge the BPM discipline which prescribes that process design principles derived from best practices are universally applicable irrespective of the context in which the service organisation operates. The results strongly suggest that in the business process design area one size does not fit all service organisations and that some design principles fit better under certain contextual conditions. We then use these findings to develop a contingency conceptual framework and associated research propositions linking the firm's service strategy context to the use of particular business process design principles. This extends existing theory and provides a platform for future process design research in service organisations that is more closely aligned with the needs of practitioners