Towards Next Generation Business Process Model Repositories – A Technical Perspective on Loading and Processing of Process Models

Business process management repositories manage large collections of process models ranging in the thousands. Additionally, they provide management functions like e.g. mining, querying, merging and variants management for process models. However, most current business process management repositories are built on top of relation database management systems (RDBMS) although this leads to performance issues. These issues result from the relational algebra, the mismatch between relational tables and object oriented programming (impedance mismatch) as well as new technological developments in the last 30 years as e.g. more and cheap disk and memory space, clusters and clouds. The goal of this paper is to present current paradigms to overcome the performance problems inherent in RDBMS. Therefore, we have to fuse research about data modeling along database technologies as well as algorithm design and parallelization for the technology paradigms occurring nowadays. Based on these research streams we have shown how the performance of business process management repositories could be improved in terms of loading performance of processes (from e.g. a disk) and the computation of management techniques resulting in even faster application of such a technique. Exemplarily, applications of the compiled paradigms are presented to show their applicability

Business process discovery through conversation log analysis in pluralist and coercive problem contexts

Business process discovery is one of the most fundamental steps of business process management (BPM) lifecycles. Incorrect, misleading or biased results of this stage can cause the whole BPM project to fail or the information systems that are created based on them to have great alignment problems with the reality of the organisation and how people carry out their work. The main problems of the business process discovery phase stem from two main sources. Firstly, the wrong attachment of BPM definitions and business process discovery techniques to the functionalist social paradigm whose only objective is the survival of the organisation through ensuring its efficiency and adaptability like a machine. This attachment to the functionalist paradigm has made BPM definitions to assume that organisations as social systems are in a unitary problem context, which means its constituents have similar beliefs and interests, they share common goals and objectives and they have all been involved in the decision-making. These assumptions are obviously far from the reality of today’s organisations which are normally either in pluralist or coercive problem contexts. The second source of problems in the business process discovery phase are BPM’s definitions and techniques over-reliance on human memory and cognition that has made them suffer, like any other knowledge acquisition technique, from human memory and cognition limitations. Using Design Science Research methodology, this research develops a conceptual framework in which new definitions for business task, business process and business process model in pluralist and coercive problem contexts will be presented. It will also be shown that conversation logs are a good source of information for business process discovery based on the new definitions and that using conversation logs can reduce the limitations caused by human memory and cognition. To develop the new conceptual framework, organisations as social systems have been analysed using the creative holism systems approach, and sound theories such as viable system model (VSM), i* framework, speech act theory, conversation for action diagrams and episodic memory have been leveraged.Based on the conceptual framework that consumes email messages as the conversation log and as its source of information, a method for business process discovery has been developed.Using two case studies it has been demonstrated that the proposed definitions and the developed methods are applicable in unitary, pluralist and coercive problem contexts; and taking advantage of the conversation logs as their information source, they suffer to a lesser extent from human memory and cognition limitations. As a consequence, the resulting business process models created from applying the proposed definitions and methods are closer to the realities of the organisations and can increase the success rate of the business process management projects and reduce the information system’s alignment problems

Enabling knowledge management of organizational memory for groups through shared topic maps

An Organization\u27s success and growth are increasingly becoming dependent upon how efficiently the Business Processes are managed. Knowledge Management and Organizational Memory have become critical components in the management of Business Processes. As, the Business Process Managers, Participants and End Users are dependent upon information and knowledge from myriad sources, thus their ability to proficiently access, use and generate new knowledge from existing knowledge has become quite vital. Organizations today work as an interconnected web of their Business Processes. Thus to ensure success, to garner the enhanced organizational capabilities and to have sustain performance improvements, they should incorporate knowledge-sharing among different teams. We present a model, based on Shared Group Topic Map approach which uses these concepts and illustrate its use by way of supporting a group search implementation. The design, implementation and example scenario of this system are given and explained

An Approach to the Problem of Computer Simulations in Business

Computer terminals in business are becoming increasingly popular. By calling prestored programs from the computer memory and feeding necessary data from a terminal device in their offices, modern executives have been able to make better use of quantitative techniques in the decision-making process. The desk-like terminals provide executives direct access to information files of their companies and to computerized analysis of current operations. Gupta pointed out that the broad applications of terminal processing has allowed the executive greater control without stretching his span of management. If students in business courses are pre-exposed to this type of computer processing, it will undoubtedly add enrichment to their future careers in the world of business

An Approach to the Problem of Computer Simulations in Business

Computer terminals in business are becoming increasingly popular. By calling prestored programs from the computer memory and feeding necessary data from a terminal device in their offices, modern executives have been able to make better use of quantitative techniques in the decision-making process. The desk-like terminals provide executives direct access to information files of their companies and to computerized analysis of current operations. Gupta pointed out that the broad applications of terminal processing has allowed the executive greater control without stretching his span of management. If students in business courses are pre-exposed to this type of computer processing, it will undoubtedly add enrichment to their future careers in the world of business

Managing Employee Resistance to Process Innovation Case: The Textile and Garment industry in Vietnam

This research deepens and expands the study of different antecedents leading to the re-sistance to process innovation within the firms. It concentrates on analysing the correlations between four independent variables: employee’s commitments, strength toward the existing habits, self-esteem, knowledge management and three dimensions of resistance of employ-ees in response to the proposed innovations: cognition, emotion and behaviour. The empiri-cal study was conducted in the context of the Textile and Garment industry in Vietnam by utilizing a sample of 96 employees working in the enterprises undergoing the changes in manufacturing process. The outcomes of the study confirmed the influence of loyalty to the organization (a construct of employee’s commitment), strength toward the existing habits and self-esteem on three dimensions of resistance to innovation. In terms of knowledge management, only the organizational memory construct affects to the opposed thought, emo-tion and behaviour of employees while the knowledge acquisition element only impacts on the behavioural perspective of the resistance to innovation. Likewise, essential practical implications are offered for the company’s board of management when they deploy changes in business processes

Incremental Discovery of Process Maps

Protsessikaeve on meetodite kogu, analüüsimaks protsesside teostuse jooksul loodud sündmuste logisid, et saada teavet nende parandamiseks. Protsessikaeve meetodite kogu, mida nimetatakse automatiseeritud protsessi avastuseks, lubab analüütikutel leida informatsiooni äriprotsesside mudelite kohta sündmuste logidest. Automatiseeritud protsessi avastusmeetodeid kasutatakse tavaliselt ühenduseta keskkonnas, mis tähendab, et protsessi mudel avastatakse hetketõmmisena tervest sündmuste logist. Samas on olukordi, kus uued juhtumid tulevad peale sellise suure kiirusega, et ei ole mõtet salvestada tervet sündmuste logi ja pidevalt nullist taasavastada mudelit. Selliste olukordade jaoks oleks vaja võrgus olevaid protsessi avastusmeetmeid. Andes sisendiks protsessi teostuse käigus loodud sündmuste voo, võrgus oleva protsessi avastusmeetodi eesmärk on järjepidevalt uuendada protsessi mudelit, tehes seda piiratud hulga mäluga ja säilitades sama täpsust, mida suudavad meetodid ühenduseta keskkondades. Olemasolevad meetodid vajavad palju mälu, et saavutada tulemusi, mis oleks võrreldavad ühenduseta keskkonnas saadud tulemustega. Käesolev lõputöö pakub välja võrgus oleva protsessi avastusraamistiku, ühtlustades protsessi avastus probleemi vähemälu haldusega ja kasutades vähemälu asenduspoliitikaid lahendamaks antud probleemi. Loodud raamistik on kirjutatud kasutades .NET-i, integreeritud Minit protsessikaeve tööriistaga ja analüüsitud kasutades elulisi ärijuhte.Process mining is a body of methods to analyze event logs produced during the execution of business processes in order to extract insights for their improvement. A family of process mining methods, known as automated process discovery, allows analysts to extract business process models from event logs. Traditional automated process discovery methods are intended to be used in an offline setting, meaning that the process model is extracted from a snapshot of an event log stored in its entirety. In some scenarios however, events keep coming with a high arrival rate to the extent that it is impractical to store the entire event log and to continuously re-discover a process model from scratch. Such scenarios require online automated process discovery approaches. Given an event stream produced by the execution of a business process, the goal of an online automated process discovery method is to maintain a continuously updated model of the process with a bounded amount of memory while at the same time achieving similar accuracy as offline methods. Existing automated discovery approaches require relatively large amounts of memory to achieve levels of accuracy comparable to that of offline methods. This thesis proposes a online process discovery framework that addresses this limitation by mapping the problem of online process discovery to that of cache memory management, and applying well-known cache replacement policies to the problem of online process discovery. The proposed framework has been implemented in .NET, integrated with the Minit process mining tool and comparatively evaluated against an existing baseline, using real-life datasets

A Seamless Convergence of the Digital and Physical Factory Aiming in Personalized Product Emergence Process (PPEP) for Smart Products within ESB Logistics Learning Factory at Reutlingen University

AbstractA seamless convergence of the digital and physical factory aiming in personalized Product Emergence Process (PPEP) for smart products within ESB Logistics Learning Factory at Reutlingen University.A completely new business model with reference to Industrie4.0 and facilitated by 3D Experience Software in today's networked society in which customers expect immediate responses, delightful experience and simple solutions is one of the mission scenarios in the ESB Logistics Learning Factory at ESB Business School (Reutlingen University).The business experience platform provides software solutions for every organization in the company respectively in the factory. An interface with dashboards, project management apps, 3D - design and construction apps with high end visualization, manufacturing and simulation apps as well as intelligence and social network apps in a collaborative interactive environment help the user to learn the creation of a value end to end process for a personalized virtual and later real produced product.Instead of traditional ways of working and a conventional operating factory real workers and robots work semi-intuitive together. Centerpiece in the self-planned interim factory is the smart personalized product, uniquely identifiable and locatable at all times during the production process – a scooter with an individual colored mobile phone – holder for any smart phone produced with a 3D printer in lot size one. Smart products have in the future solutions incorporated internet based services – designed and manufactured - at the costs of mass products. Additionally the scooter is equipped with a retrievable declarative product memory. Monitoring and control is handled by sensor tags and a raspberry positioned on the product. The engineering design and implementation of a changeable production system is guided by a self-execution system that independently find amongst others esplanade workplaces.The imparted competences to students and professionals are project management method SCRUM, customization of workflows by Industrie4.0 principles, the enhancements of products with new personalized intelligent parts, electrical and electronic self-programmed components and the control of access of the product memory information, to plan in a digital engineering environment and set up of the physical factory to produce customer orders. The gained action-orientated experience refers to the chances and requirements for holistic digital and physical systems

A Bibliometric Analysis of the Intellectual Structure of Studies on Slavery in the 21st Century

Objective of the study: The aim of the article was to analyze the intellectual structure of publications on slavery within the scope of the Administration. To achieve this objective, the following research questions were proposed: What is the intellectual structure of recent publications on slavery in the business research area? How is the past of slavery remembered (or forgotten) in this century’s researches on business research area?Methodology/approach: We used the quantitative method of scientific mapping that combines bibliometrics and graphic representation. In this process, we extracted publications from the Scopus database and, then, grouped the references using the Bibexcel software. To identify the subgroups and create the visualization map, we used VOSviewer.Originality/Relevance: Slavery is generally considered to be the dark side of business practices, and for this reason, it is a topic that is still little explored in management research. The relevance of this study is to systematize the academic production of this sensitive topic and to offer scholars and practitioners in the area a detailed analysis of the theoretical foundation of studies on slavery.Main results: Results indicate that the intellectual structure of studies related to slavery can be grouped into nine pillars that cover several themes, such as heritage tourism, Critical Accounting, Management History and the perpetuation of the legacy of slavery in the globalized world.Theoretical/methodological contributions (mandatory): Analyzing the repressed memory of slavery in the context of management is necessary and a great opportunity for future research. It is undeniable that slavery is a part of History that cannot be overlooked and this study explores this latent gap in Management studies