A component-based product line architecture for workflow management systems

This paper presents a component-based product line for workflow management systems. The process followed to design the product line was based on the Catalysis method. Extensions were made to represent variability across the process. The domain of workflow management systems has been shown to be appropriate to the application of the product line approach as there are a standard architecture and models established by a regulatory board, the Workflow Management Coalition. In addition, there is a demand for similar workflow management systems but with some different features. The product line architecture was evaluated with Rapide simulation tools. The evaluation was based on selected scenarios, thus, avoiding implementation issues. The strategy that has been used to populate the architecture and experiment with the product line is shown. In particular, the design of the workflow execution manager component is described

Grid-enabled Workflows for Industrial Product Design

This paper presents a generic approach for developing and using Grid-based workflow technology for enabling cross-organizational engineering applications. Using industrial product design examples from the automotive and aerospace industries we highlight the main requirements and challenges addressed by our approach and describe how it can be used for enabling interoperability between heterogeneous workflow engines

A product line for workflow management systems

This paper presents an ongoing research on the development of a component-based product line architecture for workflow management systems. The research includes a process to design the proposed product line, the population of the product with components, the product member production process, architecture evaluation mechanisms using architecture description languages and support tools, a variability management process and the development of case studies to evaluate each proposed technique

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

Mining Event Logs to Support Workflow Resource Allocation

Workflow technology is widely used to facilitate the business process in enterprise information systems (EIS), and it has the potential to reduce design time, enhance product quality and decrease product cost. However, significant limitations still exist: as an important task in the context of workflow, many present resource allocation operations are still performed manually, which are time-consuming. This paper presents a data mining approach to address the resource allocation problem (RAP) and improve the productivity of workflow resource management. Specifically, an Apriori-like algorithm is used to find the frequent patterns from the event log, and association rules are generated according to predefined resource allocation constraints. Subsequently, a correlation measure named lift is utilized to annotate the negatively correlated resource allocation rules for resource reservation. Finally, the rules are ranked using the confidence measures as resource allocation rules. Comparative experiments are performed using C4.5, SVM, ID3, Na\"ive Bayes and the presented approach, and the results show that the presented approach is effective in both accuracy and candidate resource recommendations.Comment: T. Liu et al., Mining event logs to support workflow resource allocation, Knowl. Based Syst. (2012), http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1016/j.knosys.2012.05.01

Product based workflow support : a recommendation service for dynamic workflow execution

Product Based Workflow Design (PBWD) is a revolutionary and successful new approach to workflow process support. A description of the product, the Product Data Model (PDM), is central in this approach. While other research so far has focused on deriving a process model from the PDM, this paper presents a way to directly execute the PDM, leading to a more dynamic and flexible support for the workflow process. Based on the information available for a case the next step to be performed is determined using a strategy of e.g. lowest cost or shortest processing time. A prototype implementing these execution recommendations is presented

Product based workflow support : a recommendation service for dynamic workflow execution

Product Based Workflow Design (PBWD) is a revolutionary and successful new approach to workflow process support. A description of the product, the Product Data Model (PDM), is central in this approach. While other research so far has focused on deriving a process model from the PDM, this paper presents a way to directly execute the PDM, leading to a more dynamic and flexible support for the workflow process. Based on the information available for a case the next step to be performed is determined using a strategy of e.g. lowest cost or shortest processing time. A prototype implementing these execution recommendations is presented

Workflow Activity Task Controller: an Approach to Distribute Knowledge and Information in Collaborative Product Development

This paper presents a theoretical approach to workflow process management using well established PDM functions for controlling knowledge and information to support collaborative product development processes within the WWW. The new methodology is called Workflow Activity Task Controller (WATC) that can securely distribute design and manufacturing knowledge to support process planning with information exchange during the early stages of the product development phases. Most specifically, WATC uses the methods described herein to link the workflow management of a PDM system with a knowledge-based system and a process planning system. In addition, this framework is flexible and adaptive and can be extended to adapt to a specific company’s needs. The objective and the intention of the development are to improve information flows, promote sharing of design and manufacturing knowledge and subsequently to maximise effectiveness of product development activities and task efficiency