Providing Integrated Life Cycle Support in Process-Aware Information Systems

The need for more flexibility of process-aware information systems (PAISs) has been discussed for several years and different approaches for adaptive process management have emerged. However, only few of them provide support for both changes of individual process instances and the propagation of process type changes to a collection of related process instances. Furthermore, knowledge about process changes has not yet been exploited by any of these systems. This paper presents the ProCycle approach which overcomes this practical limitation by capturing the whole process life cycle and all kinds of changes in an integrated way. Users are not only allowed to deviate from the predefined process in exceptional situations, but are also assisted in retrieving and reusing knowledge about previously performed changes in this context. If similar instance deviations occur frequently, process engineers will be supported in deriving improved process models from them. This, in turn, allows engineers to evolve the PAIS (including the knowledge about the changes) over time. Feasability of the ProCycle approach is demonstrated by a proof-of-concept prototype which combines adaptive process management technology with concepts and methods provided by case-based reasoning (CBR) technology

Process Change Patterns: Recent Research, Use Cases, Research Directions

In previous work, we introduced change patterns to foster a systematic comparison of process-aware information systems with respect to change support. This paper revisits change patterns and shows how our research activities have evolved. Further, it presents characteristic use cases and gives insights into current research directions

A Method For Rewriting Legacy Systems Using Business Process Management Technology

Legacy systems are systems which execute useful tasks for the organization. Unfortunately, to maintain a legacy system running is a complex and costly task. Thus, in recent years several approaches were suggested to rewrite legacy systems using contemporary technologies. In this paper we present a method for rewriting legacy systems based on Business Process Management (BPM). The use of BPM for migrating legacy systems facilitates the monitoring and continuous improvement of the information systems existing in the organization

On the Support of Workflow Activity Patterns in Process Modeling Tools: Purpose and Requirements

Patterns increase the reuse of existing knowledge (e.g., design solutions, source code) within organizations and help to achieve consistency between applications. Patterns for process design have received considerable attention by both business analysts and researchers. Several pattern categories have been proposed including patterns for control and data flow, resources, process change, and exception handling. Workflow activity patterns, which can be used as building blocks for business process models (e.g., approval, task execution request), however, have not been explored in-depth so far. Related to this problem we have proposed a set of workflow activity patterns in the ProWAP project. Each activity pattern represents a recurrent business function as it can be frequently found in business processes. The completeness and existence of our activity patterns has been evaluated through an extensive analysis of real process models. In this paper we discuss how to implement activity patterns within a BPM tool. In particular, we describe major goals and requirements of the BPM tool we are currently developing and in which we apply workflow activity patterns. In this context, we also provide a discussion regarding the notion we use for representing activity patterns (BPMN 1.2 vs. UML 2.0)

Towards Compliance of Cross-Organizational Processes and their Changes

Businesses require the ability to rapidly implement new processes and to quickly adapt existing ones to environmental changes including the optimization of their interactions with partners and customers. However, changes of either intra- or cross-organizational processes must not be done in an uncontrolled manner. In particular, processes are increasingly subject to compliance rules that usually stem from security constraints, corporate guidelines, standards, and laws. These compliance rules have to be considered when modeling business processes and changing existing ones. While change and compliance have been extensively discussed for intra-organizational business processes, albeit only in an isolated manner, their combination in the context of cross-organizational processes remains an open issue. In this paper, we discuss requirements and challenges to be tackled in order to ensure that changes of cross-organizational business processes preserve compliance with imposed regulations, standards and laws

What BPM Technology Can Do for Healthcare Process Support

Healthcare organizations are facing the challenge of delivering personalized services to their patients in a cost-effective and efficient manner. This, in turn, requires advanced IT support for healthcare processes covering both organizational procedures and knowledge-intensive, dynamic treatment processes. Nowadays, required agility is often hindered by a lack of flexibility in hospital information systems. To overcome this inflexibility a new generation of information systems, denoted as process-aware information systems (PAISs), has emerged. In contrast to data- and function-centered information systems, a PAIS separates process logic from application code and thus provides an additional architectural layer. However, the introduction of process-aware hospital information systems must neither result in rigidity nor restrict staff members in their daily work. This keynote presentation reflects on recent developments from the business process management (BPM) domain, which enable process adaptation, process flexibility, and process evolution. These key features will be illustrated along existing BPM frameworks. Altogether, emerging BPM methods, concepts and technologies will contribute to further enhance IT support for healthcare processes

Towards Context-aware Process Guidance in Cyber-Physical Systems with Augmented Reality

Assembly, configuration, maintenance, and repair processes in cyber-physical systems (e.g., a press line in a plant) comprise a multitude of complex tasks, whose execution needs to be controlled, coordinated and monitored. Amongst others, a process-centric guidance of users (e.g. service operators) is required, taking the high variability in the assembly of cyber-physical systems (e.g. press line variability) into account. Moreover, the tasks to be performed along these processes may be related to physical components, sensors and actuators, which need to be properly recognized, integrated and operated. In order to digitize cyber-physical processes as well as to guide users in a process-centric way, therefore, we suggest integrating process management technology, sensor/actuator interfaces, and augmented reality techniques. The paper discusses fundamental requirements for such an integration and presents an approach for process-centric user guidance that combines context and process management with augmented reality enhanced tasks. For evaluation purposes, we analyzed the cyber-physical processes of pharmaceutical packaging machines and implemented selected ones based on the approach. Overall, we are able to demonstrate the usefulness of context-aware process management for the flexible support of cyber-physical processes in the Industrial Internet of Things

Robust and Flexible Error Handling in the AristaFlow BPM Suite

Process-aware information systems will be not accepted by users if rigidity or idleness due to failures comes with them. When implementing business processes based on process management technology one fundamental goal is to ensure robustness of the resulting process-aware information system. Meeting this goal becomes extremely complicated if high flexibility demands need to be fullled. This paper shows how the AristaFlow BPM Suite assists process participants in coping with errors and exceptional situations in a flexible and robust way. In particular, we focus on novel error handling procedures and capabilities using the flexibility provided by ad-hoc changes not shown in other context so far