Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.In modern organisations business process modelling has become fundamental due to the increasing rate of organisational change. As a consequence, an organisation needs to continuously redesign its business processes on a regular basis. One major problem associated with the way business process modelling (BPM) is carried out today is the lack of explicit and systematic reuse of previously developed models. Enabling the reuse of previously modelled behaviour can have a beneficial impact on the quality and efficiency of the overall information systems development process and also improve the effectiveness of an organisation’s business processes. In related disciplines, like software engineering, patterns have emerged as a widely accepted architectural mechanism for reusing solutions. In business process modelling the use of patterns is quite limited apart from few sporadic attempts proposed by the literature. Thus, pattern-based BPM is not commonplace. Business process patterns should ideally be discovered from the empirical analysis of organisational processes. Empiricism is currently not the basis for the discovery of patterns for business process modelling and no systematic methodology for collecting and analysing process models of business organisations currently exists. The purpose of the presented research project is to develop a methodological framework for achieving reuse in BPM via the discovery and adoption of patterns. The framework is called Semantic Discovery and Reuse of Business Process Patterns (SDR). SDR provides a systematic method for identifying patterns among organisational data assets representing business behaviour. The framework adopts ontologies (i.e., formalised conceptual models of real-world domains) in order to facilitate such discovery. The research has also produced an ontology of business processes that provides the underlying semantic definitions of processes and their constituent parts. The use of ontologies to model business processes represents a novel approach and combines advances achieved by the Semantic Web and BPM communities. The methodological framework also relates to a new line of research in BPM on declarative business processes in which the models specify what should be done rather than how to ‘prescriptively’ do it. The research follows a design science method for designing and evaluating SDR. Evaluation is carried out using real world sources and reuse scenarios taken from both the financial and educational domains

Agnostic content ontology design patterns for a multi-domain ontology

This research project aims to solve the semantic heterogeneity problem. Semantic heterogeneity mimics cancer in that semantic heterogeneity unnecessarily consumes resources from its host, the enterprise, and may even affect lives. A number of authors report that semantic heterogeneity may cost a significant portion of an enterprise’s IT budget. Also, semantic heterogeneity hinders pharmaceutical and medical research by consuming valuable research funds. The RA-EKI architecture model comprises a multi-domain ontology, a cross-industry agnostic construct composed of rich axioms notably for data integration. A multi-domain ontology composed of axiomatized agnostic data model patterns would drive a cognitive data integration application system usable in any industry sector. This project’s objective is to elicit agnostic data model patterns here considered as content ontology design patterns. The first research question of this project pertains to the existence of agnostic patterns and their capacity to solve the semantic heterogeneity problem. Due to the theory-building role of this project, a qualitative research approach constitutes the appropriate manner to conduct its research. Contrary to theory testing quantitative methods that rely on well-established validation techniques to determine the reliability of the outcome of a given study, theorybuilding qualitative methods do not possess standardized techniques to ascertain the reliability of a study. The second research question inquires on a dual method theory-building approach that may demonstrate trustworthiness. The first method, a qualitative Systematic Literature Review (SLR) approach induces the sought knowledge from 69 retained publications using a practical screen. The second method, a phenomenological research protocol elicits the agnostic concepts from semi-structured interviews involving 22 senior practitioners with 21 years in average of experience in conceptualization. The SLR retains a set of 89 agnostic concepts from 2009 through 2017. The phenomenological study in turn retains 83 agnostic concepts. During the synthesis stage for both studies, data saturation was calculated for each of the retained concepts at the point where the concepts have been selected for a second time. The quantification of data saturation constitutes an element of the trustworthiness’s transferability criterion. It can be argued that this effort of establishing the trustworthiness, i.e. credibility, dependability, confirmability and transferability can be construed as extensive and this research track as promising. Data saturation for both studies has still not been reached. The assessment performed in the course of the establishment of trustworthiness of this project’s dual method qualitative research approach yields very interesting findings. Such findings include two sets of agnostic data model patterns obtained from research protocols using radically different data sources i.e. publications vs. experienced practitioners but with striking similarities. Further work is required using exactly the same protocols for each of the methods, expand the year range for the SLR and to recruit new co-researchers for the phenomenological protocol. This work will continue until these protocols do not elicit new theory material. At this point, new protocols for both methods will be designed and executed with the intent to measure theoretical saturation. For both methods, this entails in formulating new research questions that may, for example, focus on agnostic themes such as finance, infrastructure, relationships, classifications, etc. For this exploration project, the road ahead involves the design of new questionnaires for semi-structured interviews. This project will need to engage in new knowledge elicitation techniques such as focus groups. The project will definitely conduct other qualitative research methods such as research action for eliciting new knowledge and know-how from actual development and operation of an ontology-based cognitive application. Finally, a mixed methods qualitative-quantitative approach would prepare the transition toward theory testing method using hypothetico-deductive techniques

Sustav za upravljanje laboratorijskim ispitivanjima materijala

U radu je prikazan postojeći ručni način rada u laboratorijima građevinskog instituta i njegovi nedostaci te se razmatra poboljšanje rada informatizacijom. Slijedilo je koncipiranje informacijskog sustava za upravljanje laboratorijskim ispitivanjima materijala naziva e- Laboratorij sa primjenom na Internetu. Provedena je analiza laboratorijskog procesa pri čemu su definirane faze i opisan njegov tijek. Sistematizirana su podatkovna obilježja i organizirana u bazu podataka. Stvorena je radna baza i baza podataka stručnog znanja. Definirane su korisničke okoline sustava. Oblikovana je radna okolina sa stranicama svakog radnog procesa i pripadajućim podatkovnim obilježjima te njihove veze sa stranicama okoline za korištenje znanja. Oblikovanjem okoline za stvaranje znanja definirajna su sva obilježja potrebna za opisivanje ekspertnog znanja koje se pohranjuje u bazu podataka stručnog znanja. Definirani su procesi učenja sustava sa svrhom proširivanja i nadograđivanja baze podataka stručnog znanja. U radu je opisano korištenje svake pojedine okoline, a simulacijom rada prikazano je funkcioniranje sustava za slučajeve poznate i nove situacije. \Na primjerima ispitivanja čelika za armiranje prikazano je pregledavanje podataka iz baze podataka prema različitim kriterijima. Za odabrano vlačno svojstvo rebrastog čelika za armiranje provedena je obrada metodama opisne statistike i statističkih testiranja hipoteza: ttest, F-test i analiza varijance. Kao primjer eksploratorne analize primijenjena je metoda faktorske analize armirano-betonskog nosača. Provedena je kvantitativna usporedba informacijskog i ručnog načina rada. Opisane su stranice e-Laboratorij sustava i principi njegove primjene na Internetu. \Na kraju se iznose zaključci o doprinosima u poboljšanju rada, razmatraju perspektive daljnjeg razvoja te moguće prepreke i ograničenja

Extracción de patrones sintáctico-semánticos de documentos de patentes

El objetivo de este proyecto consiste en realizar la extracción de patrones sintáctico-semánticos que se encuentran dentro de los documentos de patentes publicadas y públicas. Los documentos de patentes son redactados por profesionales expertos, por ello estamos hablando de que contaremos con documentos muy bien redactados y de gran calidad gramatical. Al finalizar la investigación contaremos con un listado de patrones ordenados por frecuencia. Conoceremos los patrones sintáctico-semánticos que son más utilizados a la hora de redactar una patente. Además de patrones, también conoceremos cuáles son las palabras que más se repiten, sabremos las palabras más comunes en la redacción de patrones.Ingeniería Técnica en Informática de Gestió