Towards Intelligent Support of Workflows

In order to support business processes in a dynamically changing environment, workflow management systems are required to flexibly react to changes in the organization of work. We propose the notion of intelligent support for workflows by enhancing an existing workflow management system with three different concepts. First, agents are empowered to adapt the pre-planned workflows to their case-specific situation. Second, a recommender system presents to the agents the operations favorable in their current work situation. Finally, process histories are analyzed in order to make the implicit process knowledge explicitly available for further reuse

POETS - Process-Oriented Enterprise Transaction Systems

Dieser Endbericht der Projektgruppe 509 mit dem Titel Process-Oriented Enterprise Transaction Systems (POETS) des Lehrstuhls 14 des Fachbereichs Informatik der Universität Dortmund dient dazu, den bisherigen Verlauf und die Ergebnisse der Lehrveranstaltung aus dem Wintersemester 2006/2007 und dem Sommersemester 2007 vorzustellen. Im ersten Semester wurden nach der Einarbeitung in das Thema, Konzepte und Methoden erarbeitet, um die Projektgruppenziele zu erreichen. Die Möglichkeiten der beteiligten Softwareplattformen wurden ergründet und die notwendigen Erweiterungen konzipiert und teilweise bereits implementiert. Im zweiten Semester wurde die Implemetierung des Systems fortgeführt und beendet. Es wurden wichtige Erkenntnisse gesammelt über die Fähigkeiten des Systmes im Bereich Business Process Reengineering (BPR)und Continuous Process Improvement (CPI). Die Fähigkeiten des Systems im Bereich Logging und Monitoring wurden erweitert. Es wurde eine Softwareschnittstelle erstellt, die den Anschluss von Sensoren aus dem SmarterWohnen Umfeld an das System zulässt. Das Projekt SmarterWohnen, das Grundlage unserer Arbeit ist, ist ein breites und interessantes Themenfeld. Die technischen Vorgaben und Möglichkeiten wurden mit den Methoden, welche die Informatik bietet, untersucht und strukturiert. Das System wurde bewertet und mit ähnlichen Systemen verglichen. Au erdem wurde eine Bewertung der Projektorganisation erstellt

State-of-the-art on evolution and reactivity

This report starts by, in Chapter 1, outlining aspects of querying and updating resources on the Web and on the Semantic Web, including the development of query and update languages to be carried out within the Rewerse project. From this outline, it becomes clear that several existing research areas and topics are of interest for this work in Rewerse. In the remainder of this report we further present state of the art surveys in a selection of such areas and topics. More precisely: in Chapter 2 we give an overview of logics for reasoning about state change and updates; Chapter 3 is devoted to briefly describing existing update languages for the Web, and also for updating logic programs; in Chapter 4 event-condition-action rules, both in the context of active database systems and in the context of semistructured data, are surveyed; in Chapter 5 we give an overview of some relevant rule-based agents frameworks

State-of-the-art on evolution and reactivity

This report starts by, in Chapter 1, outlining aspects of querying and updating resources on the Web and on the Semantic Web, including the development of query and update languages to be carried out within the Rewerse project. From this outline, it becomes clear that several existing research areas and topics are of interest for this work in Rewerse. In the remainder of this report we further present state of the art surveys in a selection of such areas and topics. More precisely: in Chapter 2 we give an overview of logics for reasoning about state change and updates; Chapter 3 is devoted to briefly describing existing update languages for the Web, and also for updating logic programs; in Chapter 4 event-condition-action rules, both in the context of active database systems and in the context of semistructured data, are surveyed; in Chapter 5 we give an overview of some relevant rule-based agents frameworks

Proceedings of VikingPLoP 2012 Conference

The papers in this proceedings are updated versions of the papers workshopped in the conference. Participants submitted their papers for shepherding process. In shepherding process, experienced pattern writer gave ideas and feedback for the author, colloquially known as a sheep. The sheep incorporated this feedback in to her paper. After three iterations of shepherding the paper was discussed at the conference in writer's workshop. Workshop group gave comments, criticism and praise. After the conference sheep updated their papers according to the workshop feedback. This process of giving feedback was made possible by having community of trust. Mutual trust was built by playing non-competitive games and by having social activities. VikingPLoP 2012 focused on patterns and their usage in various fields of expertise. These fields included a wide range of topics from language teaching to embedded system's software architecture. Bringing people together from various fields of expertise, stimulates creativity and new ideas might emerge. These innovations are reflected in the papers in these proceedings. VikingPLoP 2012 was especially a conference for newcomers and over half of the participants were first time PLoP participants. These proceedings contain 10 papers and description of one focus group. In addition, a shepherding workshop was arranged and updated version of the demo pattern used in this workshop is also presented in the proceedings. The conference had two writer's workshop groups. Papers are organized as follows: in the first part of the proceedings patterns for embedded systems are presented and the second part contains general software related patterns. Finally in the third part, interdisciplinary patterns are included.<br/

Proceedings of VikingPLoP 2012 Conference

The papers in this proceedings are updated versions of the papers workshopped in the conference. Participants submitted their papers for shepherding process. In shepherding process, experienced pattern writer gave ideas and feedback for the author, colloquially known as a sheep. The sheep incorporated this feedback in to her paper. After three iterations of shepherding the paper was discussed at the conference in writer's workshop. Workshop group gave comments, criticism and praise. After the conference sheep updated their papers according to the workshop feedback. This process of giving feedback was made possible by having community of trust. Mutual trust was built by playing non-competitive games and by having social activities. VikingPLoP 2012 focused on patterns and their usage in various fields of expertise. These fields included a wide range of topics from language teaching to embedded system's software architecture. Bringing people together from various fields of expertise, stimulates creativity and new ideas might emerge. These innovations are reflected in the papers in these proceedings. VikingPLoP 2012 was especially a conference for newcomers and over half of the participants were first time PLoP participants. These proceedings contain 10 papers and description of one focus group. In addition, a shepherding workshop was arranged and updated version of the demo pattern used in this workshop is also presented in the proceedings. The conference had two writer's workshop groups. Papers are organized as follows: in the first part of the proceedings patterns for embedded systems are presented and the second part contains general software related patterns. Finally in the third part, interdisciplinary patterns are included.<br/

Internet-based solutions to support distributed manufacturing

With the globalisation and constant changes in the marketplace, enterprises are adapting themselves to face new challenges. Therefore, strategic corporate alliances to share knowledge, expertise and resources represent an advantage in an increasing competitive world. This has led the integration of companies, customers, suppliers and partners using networked environments. This thesis presents three novel solutions in the tooling area, developed for Seco tools Ltd, UK. These approaches implement a proposed distributed computing architecture using Internet technologies to assist geographically dispersed tooling engineers in process planning tasks. The systems are summarised as follows. TTS is a Web-based system to support engineers and technical staff in the task of providing technical advice to clients. Seco sales engineers access the system from remote machining sites and submit/retrieve/update the required tooling data located in databases at the company headquarters. The communication platform used for this system provides an effective mechanism to share information nationwide. This system implements efficient methods, such as data relaxation techniques, confidence score and importance levels of attributes, to help the user in finding the closest solutions when specific requirements are not fully matched In the database. Cluster-F has been developed to assist engineers and clients in the assessment of cutting parameters for the tooling process. In this approach the Internet acts as a vehicle to transport the data between users and the database. Cluster-F is a KD approach that makes use of clustering and fuzzy set techniques. The novel proposal In this system is the implementation of fuzzy set concepts to obtain the proximity matrix that will lead the classification of the data. Then hierarchical clustering methods are applied on these data to link the closest objects. A general KD methodology applying rough set concepts Is proposed In this research. This covers aspects of data redundancy, Identification of relevant attributes, detection of data inconsistency, and generation of knowledge rules. R-sets, the third proposed solution, has been developed using this KD methodology. This system evaluates the variables of the tooling database to analyse known and unknown relationships in the data generated after the execution of technical trials. The aim is to discover cause-effect patterns from selected attributes contained In the database. A fourth system was also developed. It is called DBManager and was conceived to administrate the systems users accounts, sales engineers’ accounts and tool trial monitoring process of the data. This supports the implementation of the proposed distributed architecture and the maintenance of the users' accounts for the access restrictions to the system running under this architecture