Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

NEGOSEIO: framework for the sustainability of model-oriented enterprise interoperability

Dissertation to obtain the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Electrical and Computer Engineering(Industrial Information Systems)This dissertation tackles the problematic of Enterprise Interoperability in the current globally connected world. The evolution of the Information and Communication Technologies has endorsed the establishment of fast, secure and robust data exchanges, promoting the development of networked solutions. This allowed the specialisation of enterprises (particularly SMEs) and favoured the development of complex and heterogeneous provider systems. Enterprises are abandoning their self-centrism and working together on the development of more complete solutions. Entire business solutions are built integrating several enterprises (e.g., in supply chains, enterprise nesting) towards a common objective. Additionally, technologies, platforms, trends, standards and regulations keep evolving and demanding enterprises compliance. This evolution needs to be continuous, and is naturally followed by a constant update of each networked enterprise’s interfaces, assets, methods and processes. This unstable environment of perpetual change is causing major concerns in both SMEs and customers as the current interoperability grounds are frail, easily leading to periods of downtime, where business is not possible. The pressure to restore interoperability rapidly often leads to patching and to the adoption of immature solutions, contributing to deteriorate even more the interoperable environment. This dissertation proposes the adoption of NEGOSEIO, a framework that tackles interoperability issues by developing strong model-based knowledge assets and promoting continuous improvement and adaptation for increasing the sustainability of interoperability on enterprise systems. It presents the research motivations and the developed framework’s main blocks, which include model-based knowledge management, collaboration service-oriented architectures implemented over a cloud-based solution, and focusing particularly on its negotiation core mechanism to handle inconsistencies and solutions for the detected interoperability problems. It concludes by validating the research and the proposed framework, presenting its application in a real business case of aerospace mission design on the European Space Agency (ESA).FP7 ENSEMBLE, UNITE, MSEE and IMAGINE project

Standards Framework for Intelligent Manufacturing Systems Supply Chain

ISBN 979-953-307-708-5 http://www.intechopen.com/articles/show/title/standards-framework-for-intelligent-manufacturing-systems-supply-chain#referenceThe global market is striving to increase competitiveness among organizations and networks. Nowadays, management of supply chains does not only consider business processes in the traditional value chain, but also processes that penetrate networks of organisations. Indeed, the formation of cooperation and collaboration partnerships between several small organizations can be, in multiple cases, more efficient by comparison with big companies (Rudberg et al., 2002). This way, the research on supply chain management has turned from an intra-enterprise focus towards an inter-enterprise focus with companies looking for enhanced interoperability between computer systems and applications. Supply chain networks are characterized by different structures such as, business processes and technological, organizational, topological, informational, and financial structures. All are interrelated but following their own dynamics. Thus, in order to ensure a high responsiveness level, the supply chain plans must be formed robustly and extremely quickly in relation to all the structures (Gupta & Maranas, 2003). In fact, with regards to supply chain in the advent of globalization, one of the difficulties enterprises are facing is the lack of interoperability of systems and software applications to manage and orchestrate the different structures involved (Jardim-Goncalves et al. 2006; Panetto et al., 2006; Farinha et al., 2007). The increasing need for cooperation and collaboration together with the rapid advances in information and communication technology (ICT) have brought supply chain planning into the forefront of the business practices of most manufacturing and service organizations (Gupta & Maranas, 2003). Moreover, there has been a growing interest and research in e-business solutions to facilitate information sharing between organisations in the supply chain network

Trusted operational scenarios - Trust building mechanisms and strategies for electronic marketplaces.

This document presents and describes the trusted operational scenarios, resulting from the research and work carried out in Seamless project. The report presents identified collaboration habits of small and medium enterprises with low e-skills, trust building mechanisms and issues as main enablers of online business relationships on the electronic marketplace, a questionnaire analysis of the level of trust acceptance and necessity of trust building mechanisms, a proposal for the development of different strategies for the different types of trust mechanisms and recommended actions for the SEAMLESS project or other B2B marketplaces.trust building mechanisms, trust, B2B networks, e-marketplaces

The use and Usefulness of Actor‐Network Theory as a Basis for Social Research: A Consideration of Some Recent Publications

Abstract: The use of actor‐network theory (ANT) in social research has grown significantly in recent years. The ANT approach has been applied in fields as diverse as information systems development, media studies, accounting, education, geography, and development studies. With any new research approach that is 'trending', it is reasonable to ask how devoted the new followers are to the spirit and letter of the new theory, but in this case the nature of ANT makes the question particularly difficult. The founders and early proponents seem to agree that ANT is not really a theory; perhaps it is a method for studying historical phenomena or socio‐technical systems; perhaps it is a new style of practice‐based theorising; perhaps it is a loose collection of approaches based on a particular philosophical position concerning ontology and epistemology. This looseness of definition, while not surprising for a recent movement, makes it difficult to judge whether and when ANT is being used 'properly'. In this paper I attempt to clarify this question by examining a selection of recent publications that claim to have used ANT in their research. Most of these publications are based on case studies, although pedagogical and theoretical articles are also considered. I briefly mention some key aspects of ANT, then take a considerable sample of articles made available over the last three years and consider how many aspects of ANT they have used as the basis of their research and, in some cases how the authors have attempted to modify or extend ANT, or to combine it with other theories. I conclude by speculating on why some authors might be attracted to ANT even though they do not 'really' believe in it and why this is not necessarily a bad thing. I also suggest possible signs of 'good' ANT research. This paper is intended for those who have already developed some intention to use ANT in their research, but would like to see further examples of how this can be done. Further examples and explanation can be found in Underwood (2008) and Latour (1996)