ICT in Czech companies: business efficiency potentials to be achieved.

The paper deals with business potential analysis based on the data published by Czech Statistic Authority (SÚ). It shows that the infrastructure state of the art even in small Czech companies enables to expand ERP and CRM systems, trading over Internet, Supply Chain Management and other new trends. Internet security is here of greatest importance, however it cannot be seen as major obstacle for new trading methods. The greatest challenge identified is the process and workflow optimization. To streamline workflow the document management supporting nearly seamless integration crossover the functional areas is of greatest importance. Moreover, process optimization can run into difficulties due to cross-organization functionalities of new IT architecture concepts like Service Oriented Architecture, WEB2 concepts and other methods and means. In this paper the value flow approach is shortly mentioned as an alternative to process modeling and workflow approach. Value oriented methods can overcome the process oriented approach limitations.ICT infrastructure; Business processes; Process modeling; Document management; Value chains; Business semantics

Grid-enabled Workflows for Industrial Product Design

This paper presents a generic approach for developing and using Grid-based workflow technology for enabling cross-organizational engineering applications. Using industrial product design examples from the automotive and aerospace industries we highlight the main requirements and challenges addressed by our approach and describe how it can be used for enabling interoperability between heterogeneous workflow engines

Business process management tools as a measure of customer-centric maturity

In application of business process management (BPM) tools in European commercial sectors, this paper examines current maturity of customer centricity construct (CC) as an emerging dimension of competition and as a potential strategic management direction for the future of business. Processes are one of the key components of transformation in the CC roadmap. Particular departments are more customer orientated than others, and processes, customer-centric expertise, and approach can be built and utilized starting from them. Positive items within a current business process that only involve minor modification could be the basis for that. The evidence of movement on the customer-centric roadmap is found. BPM in European telecommunications, banking, utility and retail sector supports roadmap towards customer-centricity in process view, process alignment and process optimization. However, the movement is partial and not flawless, as BPM hasn’t been inquired for supporting many of customer-centric dimensions

Elastic Business Process Management: State of the Art and Open Challenges for BPM in the Cloud

With the advent of cloud computing, organizations are nowadays able to react rapidly to changing demands for computational resources. Not only individual applications can be hosted on virtual cloud infrastructures, but also complete business processes. This allows the realization of so-called elastic processes, i.e., processes which are carried out using elastic cloud resources. Despite the manifold benefits of elastic processes, there is still a lack of solutions supporting them. In this paper, we identify the state of the art of elastic Business Process Management with a focus on infrastructural challenges. We conceptualize an architecture for an elastic Business Process Management System and discuss existing work on scheduling, resource allocation, monitoring, decentralized coordination, and state management for elastic processes. Furthermore, we present two representative elastic Business Process Management Systems which are intended to counter these challenges. Based on our findings, we identify open issues and outline possible research directions for the realization of elastic processes and elastic Business Process Management.Comment: Please cite as: S. Schulte, C. Janiesch, S. Venugopal, I. Weber, and P. Hoenisch (2015). Elastic Business Process Management: State of the Art and Open Challenges for BPM in the Cloud. Future Generation Computer Systems, Volume NN, Number N, NN-NN., http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.future.2014.09.00

Data Workflow - A Workflow Model for Continuous Data Processing

Online data or streaming data are getting more and more important for enterprise information systems, e.g. by integrating sensor data and workflows. The continuous flow of data provided e.g. by sensors requires new workflow models addressing the data perspective of these applications, since continuous data is potentially infinite while business process instances are always finite.\ud In this paper a formal workflow model is proposed with data driven coordination and explicating properties of the continuous data processing. These properties can be used to optimize data workflows, i.e., reducing the computational power for processing the workflows in an engine by reusing intermediate processing results in several workflows

Planning and Scheduling of Business Processes in Run-Time: A Repair Planning Example

Over the last decade, the efficient and flexible management of business processes has become one of the most critical success aspects. Furthermore, there exists a growing interest in the application of Artificial Intelligence Planning and Scheduling techniques to automate the production and execution of models of organization. However, from our point of view, several connections between both disciplines remains to be exploited. The current work presents a proposal for modelling and enacting business processes that involve the selection and order of the activities to be executed (planning), besides the resource allocation (scheduling), considering the optimization of several functions and the reach of some objectives. The main novelty is that all decisions (even the activities selection) are taken in run-time considering the actual parameters of the execution, so the business process is managed in an efficient and flexible way. As an example, a complex and representative problem, the repair planning problem, is managed through the proposed approach.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TIN2009-13714Junta de Andalucía P08-TIC-0409