Automatic support for product based workflow design : generation of process models from a product data model

Product Based Workflow Design (PBWD) is one of the few scientific methodologies for the (re)design of workflow processes. It is based on an analysis of the product that is produced in the workflow process and derives a process model from the product structure. Until now this derivation has been a manual task and is therefore a time-consuming and error-prone exercise. Automatic support would enhance the use of the PBWD methodology. In this paper we propose several algorithms to automatically generate process models from a product structure and we present a software tool (implemented in ProM) to support this. Finally, the properties of the resulting process models are analysed and discussed

Formalization of semantic annotation for systems interoperability in a PLM environment

International audienceNowadays, the need for systems collaboration across enterprises and through different domains has become more and more ubiquitous. Due to the lack of standardized models or architecture, as well as semantic mismatching and inconsistencies, research works on information and model exchange, trans-formation, discovery and reuse are carried out in recent years. One of the main challenges in these researches is to overcome the semantic gap between enterprise applications along any product lifecycle, involving many distributed and heterogeneous enterprise applications. We propose, in this paper, an approach for semantically annotating different knowledge views (business process models, business rules, conceptual models, and etc.) in the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) environment. These formal semantic annotations will make explicit the tacit knowledge generally engraved in application models and act as bridges to support all actors in along the product lifecycle. A case study based on a specific manufacturing process will be presented for demonstrating how our semantic annotations can be applied in a Business to Manufacturing (B2M) interoperability contex

APQL: A process-model query language

As business process management technology matures, organisations acquire more and more business process models. The management of the resulting collections of process models poses real challenges. One of these challenges concerns model retrieval where support should be provided for the formulation and efficient execution of business process model queries. As queries based on only structural information cannot deal with all querying requirements in practice, there should be support for queries that require knowledge of process model semantics. In this paper we formally define a process model query language that is based on semantic relationships between tasks in process models and is independent of any particular process modelling notation

Semantic Annotation Model Definition for Systems Interoperability

ISBN 978-3-642-25125-2International audienceSemantic annotation is one of the useful solutions to enrich target's (systems, models, meta-models, etc.) information. There are some papers which use semantic enrichment for different purposes (integration, composition, sharing and reuse, etc.) in several domains, but none of them provides a complete process of how to use semantic annotations. This paper identifies three main components of semantic annotation, proposes for it a formal definition and presents a survey of current semantic annotation methods. At the end, we present a simple case study to explain how our semantic annotation proposition can be applied.The survey presented in this paper will be the basis of our future research on models, semantics and architecture for enterprises systems interoperability during the product lifecycle

Corpus Statistics for Measuring Business Process Similarity

In a rapidly changing environment, organizations must adapt their business processes continuously. While numerous methods enable enterprises to conceptualize and analyze their organizational structure, the task of business process modeling remains complex and time-consuming. However, by reusing and adapting existing process models, enterprises can reduce the task’s complexity while improving the quality of results. To facilitate the identification of adaptable processes, several techniques of business process similarity (BPS) have been proposed in recent years. Although most approaches produce sound results in controlled evaluations, this paper argues that their applicability is limited when analyzing real-world processes, which do not fully comply with notational labeling specifications. Consequently, we aim to enhance existing BPS techniques by using corpus statistics to account for the explanatory power of words within labels of process models. Results from our evaluation suggest that corpus statistics can improve BPS computations and can positively influence the quality of practical implications

A Cross-Organizational Process Mining Framework for Obtaining Insights from Software Products: Accurate Comparison Challenges

Software vendors offer various software products to large numbers of enterprises to support their organization, in particular Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software. Each of these enterprises use the same product for similar goals, albeit with different processes and configurations. Therefore, software vendors want to obtain insights into how the enterprises use the software product, what the differences are in usage between enterprises, and the reasons behind these differences. Cross-organizational process mining is a possible solution to address these needs, as it aims at comparing enterprises based on their usage. In this paper, we present a novel Cross-Organizational Process Mining Framework which takes as input, besides event log, semantics (meaning of terms in an enterprise) and organizational context (characteristics of an enterprise). The framework provides reasoning capabilities to determine what to compare and how. Besides, the framework enables one to create a catalog of metrics by deducing diagnostics from the usage. By using this catalog, the framework can monitor the (positive) effects of changes on processes. An enterprise operating in a similar context might also benefit from the same changes. To accommodate these improvement suggestions, the framework creates an improvement catalog of observed changes. Later, we provide a set of challenges which have to be met in order to obtain the inputs from current products to show the feasibility of the framework. Next to this, we provide preliminary results showing they can be met and illustrate an example application of the framework in cooperation with an ERP software vendor

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

Aircraft sequencing problem solve by using simulated annealing method

Since commercial aircraft exists in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, air traffic has experience a tremendous amount of growth and is now known as one of the complex logistical system. Over the past few decades, aircraft sequencing problem (ASP) has become one of the most important area of research in the OR field as the number of passengers using the air transportation has increased significantly. ASP aims is to assign each aircraft with scheduled landing time while maintaining the operational and safety constraints. In Malaysia, there is a system called Air Traffic Management (AMAN) that can produce a sequence for the aircraft to land. However, one of the weaknesses of the system is the inability of the system to provide the best route for the aircraft to land even if there is no other aircraft flying at the same period. To tackle this problem, this research will develop a program that can provide the best route for the aircraft to land by considering alternative admissible routes provided by the ATC-KL with the objective of minimizing the total airborne time of all aircrafts while satisfying the separation time constraint between the aircraft. This research will use the Simulated Annealing method with three different neighborhood structures, initial temperatures and temperature reduction formulas. From the computational results, this research has concluded that the best neighborhood structure is Swap and Reroute with an initial temperature of 300 000 and temperature reduction of where P is the random number generated by the program

A Cross-Organizational Process Mining Framework for Obtaining Insights from Software Products: Accurate Comparison Challenges

Software vendors offer various software products to large numbers of enterprises to support their organization, in particular Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software. Each of these enterprises use the same product for similar goals, albeit with different processes and configurations. Therefore, software vendors want to obtain insights into how the enterprises use the software product, what the differences are in usage between enterprises, and the reasons behind these differences. Cross-organizational process mining is a possible solution to address these needs, as it aims at comparing enterprises based on their usage. In this paper, we present a novel Cross-Organizational Process Mining Framework which takes as input, besides event log, semantics (meaning of terms in an enterprise) and organizational context (characteristics of an enterprise). The framework provides reasoning capabilities to determine what to compare and how. Besides, the framework enables one to create a catalog of metrics by deducing diagnostics from the usage. By using this catalog, the framework can monitor the (positive) effects of changes on processes. An enterprise operating in a similar context might also benefit from the same changes. To accommodate these improvement suggestions, the framework creates an improvement catalog of observed changes. Later, we provide a set of challenges which have to be met in order to obtain the inputs from current products to show the feasibility of the framework. Next to this, we provide preliminary results showing they can be met and illustrate an example application of the framework in cooperation with an ERP software vendor

IT-gestütztes Compliance Management für Geschäftsprozesse

Die Einhaltung regulatorischer Anforderungen und interner Richtlinien ist zunehmend kritisch für den Unternehmenserfolg geworden. In dieser Arbeit wird ein Ansatz vorgestellt, der eine effiziente Compliance-Prüfung von Geschäftsprozessen basierend auf den in standardisierten Ereignisprotokollen aufgezeichneten Ereignisdaten ermöglicht. Neben einer Referenzimplementierung des Ansatzes werden eine Erweiterung für ein Geschäftsprozessmanagementwerkzeug sowie ein webbasiertes Dashboard entwickelt