A Three-Level Process Framework for Contract-Based Dynamic Service Outsourcing

Service outsourcing is the business paradigm, in which an organization has part of its business process performed by a service provider. In dynamic markets, service providers are selected on the fly during process enactment. The cooperation between the parties is\ud specified in a dynamically made electronic contract. This contract includes a process specification that is tailored towards service matchmaking and crossorganizational process enactment and hence has to conform to specific market and specification standards. Process enactment, however, relies on intraorganizational process specifications that have to comply with the infrastructure available in an organization. In this position paper, we present a three-level process specification framework for dynamic contract-based\ud service outsourcing. This framework relates the two process specification levels through a third, conceptual level. This approached is inspired by the well-known ANSI-SPARC model for data management. We show how the framework can be placed in the context of infrastructures for cross-organizational process support

Personalizable Models For Business-To-Business Information Interchange In Communication Layers

Business-to-Business standards have been proven in increasing the efficiency of the document interchange procedures by eliminating human interventions. However, the integration standards contain inherent inflexibilities in the communication layers. This thesis has attempted to review the existing standards by promoting and integrating possible personalizable modelling concepts into the standardized document interchange procedures. A conceptual framework for personalization modelling is the main research outcome. In particular, the push-pull models derivation and generation can be visualized by 3-circle Venn

Ontology-based information standards development

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.Standards may be argued to be important enablers for achieving interoperability as they aim to provide unambiguous specifications for error-free exchange of documents and information. By implication, therefore, it is important to model and represent the concept of a standard in a clear, precise and unambiguous way. Although standards development organisations usually provide guidelines for the process of developing and approving standards, they are usually more concerned with administrative aspect of the process. As a consequence, the state-of-the-art lacks practical support for developing the structure and content of a standard specification. In short, there is no systematic development method currently available: (a) For developing the conceptual model underpinning a standard; and/or (b) to guide a group of stakeholders to develop a standard specification. Semantic interoperability is considered to be an essential factor for effective interoperation – the ability to achieve semantic interoperability effectively and efficiently being strongly equated with quality by some. Semantics require that the meaning of terms, their relationships and also the restrictions and rules in the standards should be clearly defined in the early stages of standard development and act as a basis for the latter stages. This research proposes that ontology can help standards developers and stakeholders to address the issues of improving conceptual models and providing a robust and shared understanding of the domain. This thesis presents OntoStanD, a comprehensive ontology-based standards development methodology, which utilises the best practices of the existing ontology creation methods. The potential value of OntoStanD is in providing a comprehensive, clear and unambiguous method for developing robust information standards, which are more test friendly and of higher quality. OntoStanD also facilitates standards conformance testing and change management, impacts interoperability and also assists in improved communication among the standards development team. Last, OntoStanD provides an approach that is repeatable, teachable and potentially general enough for creating any kinds of information standard.Fujitsu Laboratories of Europe Ltd, Google Anitaborg Memorial Scholarshi

Intelligent Agents to Support Information Sharing in B2B E-Marketplaces

This article proposes an architecture to support information and knowledge exchange between collaborating business partners. The focus is on knowledge representation and exchange by intelligent agents to support collaborative business functions through agents that exchange problem-specific information in standardized formats. The article then shows the application of the proposed architecture in the context of an infomediary-based B2B E-marketplace

E-business framework enabled B2B integration

Standards for B2B integration help to facilitate the interoperability between organisations. These standards, often called e-business frameworks, guide integration by specifying the details for business processes, business documents and secure messaging. Extensible Mark-up Language (XML) is used in modern e-business frameworks instead of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) formats. Having XML as the data format is not enough for integration, but e-business frameworks are needed to guide how XML is used. This work analyses the many partly competing and overlapping e-business frameworks how they differ in support for business processes, documents and secure messaging. In addition, the effect of standardisation organisation to the outcome of the e-business framework is studied. In this work, one e-business framework, RosettaNet, is used to tackle the challenges of product development (PD) integrations. A proof-of-concept implementation of a RosettaNet integration is provided to support PD and the lessons learned are discussed. The current specifications lack good processes for PD integrations, while they fail in specifying the concepts needed for document management. Furthermore, there are interoperability problems due to a lack of expressivity of the schema languages to encode the business documents, and the current setup of integration takes a very long time. RosettaNet has a lot of flexibility in the specifications, and thus just supporting the same standard process is not enough for interoperability. With semantic technologies, many shortcomings of the current standards for B2B integration can be solved, as they make it possible to present constraints the current technologies have problems with. This work presents a practical case of B2B integration with semantic technologies and describes the benefits of applying such technologies.Standardit tukevat organisaatioiden välistä järjestelmäintegraatiota. Integroinnin standardit määrittelevät organisaatioiden välisiä liiketoimintaprosesseja, -dokumentteja sekä määrittelevät turvallisen tavan kommunikoida. Nykyaikaiset standardit ovat XML-perusteisia vanhemman EDI-formaatin sijaan. XML:n käyttö ei ole riittävästi takaamaan integraation onnistumista, vaan tarvitaan tarkempaa sopimista, miten XML:ää käytetään integraatiossa. Joukko yritystenvälisen integroinnin standardeja määrittelee tämän. Tässä työssä analysoidaan useaa, osittain kilpailevaa, yritystenvälisen integroinnin standardia ja tutkitaan miten ne tukevat liiketoimintaprosessien, -dokumenttien ja turvallisen viestinvälityksen määrittelyjä ottaen huomioon myös standardointiorganisaation vaikutuksen lopputulokseen. Tässä työssä RosettaNet-standardia sovelletaan tuotekehitykseen liittyvissä integroinneissa. Työssä esitetään prototyyppi tuotekehitystiedon integroinnista RosettaNetin avulla ja keskustellaan saavutetuista kokemuksista. Nykyiset spesifikaatiot tuotekehitysprosesseille ovat tarpeisiin riittämättömiä, koska tuki dokumenttien hallinnan käsitteistölle on puutteellinen. Myös RosettaNetin käyttämien XML-skeemakielien puutteellinen ilmaisuvoima aiheuttaa ongelmia dokumenttien yhteentoimivuudelle. Lisäksi integraation tekeminen on hidasta verrattuna tyypillisen tuotekehitysprojektin kestoon. RosettaNetin tarjoamissa spesifikaatioissa on paljon joustavuutta, joten saman standardiprosessin tukeminen ei tarkoita, että järjestelmät ovat yhteentoimivia. Nykyspesifikaatioissa ja niissä käytettyjen skeema-kielten ilmaisuvoiman puutteet voidaan osittain paikata käyttämällä semanttisia teknologioita. Tämä työ esittää, miten integraatioissa voidaan saavuttaa semanttisia teknologioita käyttämällä parempi yhteentoimivuus.reviewe

CBG-Framework: A bottom-up model-based approach for Collaborative Business Process Management

Nowadays most existing products and services are the result of the collaboration of a large number of companies that form a value chain known as Supply Chain (SC). Then individual Business Process Management (BPM) requires a holistic vision that incorporates an inter organizational view that supports SC decision making. This study proposes a novel idea trying to address collaborative BP modelling problem with a new perspective, a bottom-up approach, reusing process models that each organization may have created with a different modelling language. Collaborative Business Generation (CBG) Framework, following Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) paradigm, includes a meta model, a method, a set of model transformations and a support tool to create collaborative BP models from individual ones, maintaining privacy and autonomy in decision making. This paper presents main CBG-Framework elements as well as a real world case study for early validation.Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad TIN2016-76956-C3-2-RMinisterio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad TIN2015-71938-RED

Foundations of B2B electronic contracting

Nowadays, flexible electronic cooperation paradigms are required for core business processes to meet the speed and flexibility requirements dictated by fast-changing markets. These paradigms should include the functionality to establish the formal business relationship required by the importance of these core processes. The business relationship should be established in an automated, electronic way in order to match the speed and flexibility requirements mentioned above. As such, it should considerably improve on the ineffectiveness and inefficiency of traditional contracting in this context. The result of the establishment should be a detailed electronic contract that contains a complete specification of the intended cooperation between organizations. Electronic contracts should contain a precise and unambiguous specification of the collaboration at both the conceptual and technological level. Existing commercial software solutions for business-to-business contracting provide low level of automation and concentrate solely on the automated management of the contract enactment. However, in the modern, dynamic, business settings, an econtracting system has to support high automation of the e-contract establishment, enactment, and management. In the thesis, the business, legal, and technological requirements for the development of a highly automated e-contracting system are investigated. Models that satisfy these requirements and that can be used as a foundation for the implementation of an electronic contracting system are defined. First, the thesis presents the business benefits introduced to companies by highly automated electronic contracting. Next, a data and process analysis of electronic contracting is presented. The specification of electronic contracts and the required process support for electronic contract establishment and enactment are investigated. The business benefits and data and process models defined in the thesis are validated on the basis of two business cases from on-line advertising, namely the cases of online advertising in "De Telegraaf" and "Google". Finally, the thesis presents a specification of the functionalities that must be provided by an e-contracting system. A conceptual reference architecture that can be used as a starting point in the design and implementation of an electronic contracting system is defined. The work in the thesis is conducted on the intersection of the scientific areas of conceptual information and process modeling and specification on the one hand and distributed information system architecture modeling on the other hand