Collaborative method to maintain business process models updated

Business process models are often forgotten after their creation and its representation is not usually updated. This appears to be negative as processes evolve over time. This paper discusses the issue of business process models maintenance through the definition of a collaborative method that creates interaction contexts enabling business actors to discuss about business processes, sharing business knowledge. The collaboration method extends the discussion about existing process representations to all stakeholders promoting their update. This collaborative method contributes to improve business process models, allowing updates based in change proposals and discussions, using a groupware tool that was developed. Four case studies were developed in real organizational environment. We came to the conclusion that the defined method and the developed tool can help organizations to maintain a business process model updated based on the inputs and consequent discussions taken by the organizational actors who participate in the processes.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Generic PLM system for SMEs: Application to an equipment manufacturer

For several years, digital engineering has increasingly taken a more important place in the strategic issues of mechanical engineering companies. Our proposition is an approach that enables technical data to be managed and used throughout the product life-cycle. This approach aims to provide assistance for costing, development and industrialization of the product, and for the capitalization, the reuse and the extension of fundamental knowledge. This approach has been experimented within several companies. This paper presents the case in a company environment that designs and produces families of ship equipment parts

Algorithms and Architecture for Real-time Recommendations at News UK

Recommendation systems are recognised as being hugely important in industry, and the area is now well understood. At News UK, there is a requirement to be able to quickly generate recommendations for users on news items as they are published. However, little has been published about systems that can generate recommendations in response to changes in recommendable items and user behaviour in a very short space of time. In this paper we describe a new algorithm for updating collaborative filtering models incrementally, and demonstrate its effectiveness on clickstream data from The Times. We also describe the architecture that allows recommendations to be generated on the fly, and how we have made each component scalable. The system is currently being used in production at News UK.Comment: Accepted for presentation at AI-2017 Thirty-seventh SGAI International Conference on Artificial Intelligence. Cambridge, England 12-14 December 201

Quality measures for ETL processes: from goals to implementation

Extraction transformation loading (ETL) processes play an increasingly important role for the support of modern business operations. These business processes are centred around artifacts with high variability and diverse lifecycles, which correspond to key business entities. The apparent complexity of these activities has been examined through the prism of business process management, mainly focusing on functional requirements and performance optimization. However, the quality dimension has not yet been thoroughly investigated, and there is a need for a more human-centric approach to bring them closer to business-users requirements. In this paper, we take a first step towards this direction by defining a sound model for ETL process quality characteristics and quantitative measures for each characteristic, based on existing literature. Our model shows dependencies among quality characteristics and can provide the basis for subsequent analysis using goal modeling techniques. We showcase the use of goal modeling for ETL process design through a use case, where we employ the use of a goal model that includes quantitative components (i.e., indicators) for evaluation and analysis of alternative design decisions.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Towards a pivotal-based approach for business process alignment.

This article focuses on business process engineering, especially on alignment between business analysis and implementation. Through a business process management approach, different transformations interfere with process models in order to make them executable. To keep the consistency of process model from business model to IT model, we propose a pivotal metamodel-centric methodology. It aims at keeping or giving all requisite structural and semantic data needed to perform such transformations without loss of information. Through this we can ensure the alignment between business and IT. This article describes the concept of pivotal metamodel and proposes a methodology using such an approach. In addition, we present an example and the resulting benefits

Evaluating and identifying optimal BIM communication patterns within design and construction projects

The shift from paper based communication to exchange of electronic copies of documents and drawings has made project participants overloaded with information. Electronically exchanged information could be better supported through BIM and automation of routing information using workflow management technologies to improve information availability for decision making. However, it has been observed that BIM is currently being utilized as a number of disconnected models. The built-in intelligence in BIM allows automated updating and extraction of 2D drawings, documentation and other building information. Extracted documents create extra work to be communicated to project teams. Therefore more tasks and communications are created. Accordingly, this study identifies the impacts of BIM in project team communication. It also critically evaluates electronic communication patterns and people’s activities by data profiling to identify variables and project characteristics that have an impact on electronic communication level

Towards a business-IT alignment maturity model for collaborative networked organizations

Aligning business and IT in networked organizations is a complex endeavor because in such settings, business-IT alignment is driven by economic processes instead of by centralized decision-making processes. In order to facilitate managing business-IT alignment in networked organizations, we need a maturity model that allows collaborating organizations to assess the current state of alignment and take appropriate action to improve it where needed. In this paper we propose the first version of such a model, which we derive from various alignment models and theories