On Engineering Support for Business Process Modelling and Redesign

Currently, there is an enormous (research) interest in business process redesign (BPR). Several management-oriented approaches have been proposed showing how to make BPR work. However, detailed descriptions of empirical experience are few. Consistent engineering methodologies to aid and guide a BPR-practitioner are currently emerging. Often, these methodologies are claimed to be developed for business process modelling, but stem directly from information system design cultures. We consider an engineering methodology for BPR to consist of modelling concepts, their representation, computerized tools and methods, and pragmatic skills and guidelines for off-line modelling, communicating, analyzing, (re)designing\ud business processes. The modelling concepts form the architectural basis of such an engineering methodology. Therefore, the choice, understanding and precise definition of these concepts determine the productivity and effectiveness of modelling tasks within a BPR project. The\ud current paper contributes to engineering support for BPR. We work out general issues that play a role in the development of engineering support for BPR. Furthermore, we introduce an architectural framework for business process modelling and redesign. This framework consists of a coherent set of modelling concepts and techniques on how to use them. The framework enables the modelling of both the structural and dynamic characteristics of business processes. We illustrate its applicability by modelling a case from service industry. Moreover, the architectural framework supports abstraction and refinement techniques. The use of these techniques for a BPR trajectory are discussed

Consistency in Multi-Viewpoint Architectural Design of Enterprise Information Systems

Different stakeholders in the design of an enterprise information system have their own view on that design. To help produce a coherent design this paper presents a framework that aids in specifying relations between such views. To help produce a consistent design the framework also aids in specifying consistency rules that apply to the view relations and in checking the consistency according to those rules. The framework focuses on the higher levels of abstraction in a design, we refer to design at those levels of abstraction as architectural design. The highest level of abstraction that we consider is that of business process design and the lowest level is that of software component design. The contribution of our framework is that it provides a collection of basic concepts that is common to viewpoints in the area of enterprise information systems. These basic concepts aid in relating viewpoints by providing: (i) a common terminology that helps stakeholders to understand each others concepts; and (ii) a basis for defining re-usable consistency rules. In particular we define re-usable rules to check consistency between behavioural views that overlap or are a refinement of each other. We also present an architecture for a tool suite that supports our framework. We show that our framework can be applied, by performing a case study in which we specify the relations and consistency rules between the RM-ODP enterprise, computational and information viewpoints

A software architecture for autonomous maintenance scheduling: Scenarios for UK and European Rail

A new era of automation in rail has begun offering developments in the operation and maintenance of industry standard systems. This article documents the development of an architecture and range of scenarios for an autonomous system for rail maintenance planning and scheduling. The Unified Modelling Language (UML) has been utilized to visualize and validate the design of the prototype. A model for information exchange between prototype components and related maintenance planning systems is proposed in this article. Putting forward an architecture and set of usage mode scenarios for the proposed system, this article outlines and validates a viable platform for autonomous planning and scheduling in rail

Enhancing preschoolers reasoning skills : an intervention to optimise the use of justificatory speech acts during peer interaction

It has long been acknowledged that justificatory speech is linked with both social and cognitive development. Yet many studies suggest that pre-school children might lack the ability or experience to produce such discourse in routine interaction. In contrast, researchers such as Eisenberg and Garvey (1981) have found evidence of pre-schoolers' justifications in conflictual play contexts. Although this has positive implications for child development, the conflictual context may sit uneasily with parents' and teachers' expectations. It is encouraging therefore that McWilliam (1999) has demonstrated that pre-schoolers can produce justificatory dialogue in both conflictual and nonconflictual situations, even if occurrence in the latter context is less frequent. Based on this, the aim of the present study was to encourage pre-schoolers' production of justificatory discourse during peer exchanges in a non-conflictual context. Twenty-two dyads from a state-run nursery were subject to verbal modelling of either justificatory speech (experimental condition) or a more commonly used alternative (control condition) in daily ten-minute sessions over five consecutive days. All interactions were videorecorded for subsequent coding and analysis. Results showed that both 'why' questions and 'justifications' were significantly higher in the experimental condition, indicating that pre-schoolers' explanatory speech can be effectively enhanced by a cooperative intervention programme

e-Social Science and Evidence-Based Policy Assessment : Challenges and Solutions

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