From Design to Production Control Through the Integration of Engineering Data Management and Workflow Management Systems

At a time when many companies are under pressure to reduce "times-to-market" the management of product information from the early stages of design through assembly to manufacture and production has become increasingly important. Similarly in the construction of high energy physics devices the collection of (often evolving) engineering data is central to the subsequent physics analysis. Traditionally in industry design engineers have employed Engineering Data Management Systems (also called Product Data Management Systems) to coordinate and control access to documented versions of product designs. However, these systems provide control only at the collaborative design level and are seldom used beyond design. Workflow management systems, on the other hand, are employed in industry to coordinate and support the more complex and repeatable work processes of the production environment. Commercial workflow products cannot support the highly dynamic activities found both in the design stages of product development and in rapidly evolving workflow definitions. The integration of Product Data Management with Workflow Management can provide support for product development from initial CAD/CAM collaborative design through to the support and optimisation of production workflow activities. This paper investigates this integration and proposes a philosophy for the support of product data throughout the full development and production lifecycle and demonstrates its usefulness in the construction of CMS detectors.Comment: 18 pages, 13 figure

BioWorkbench: A High-Performance Framework for Managing and Analyzing Bioinformatics Experiments

Advances in sequencing techniques have led to exponential growth in biological data, demanding the development of large-scale bioinformatics experiments. Because these experiments are computation- and data-intensive, they require high-performance computing (HPC) techniques and can benefit from specialized technologies such as Scientific Workflow Management Systems (SWfMS) and databases. In this work, we present BioWorkbench, a framework for managing and analyzing bioinformatics experiments. This framework automatically collects provenance data, including both performance data from workflow execution and data from the scientific domain of the workflow application. Provenance data can be analyzed through a web application that abstracts a set of queries to the provenance database, simplifying access to provenance information. We evaluate BioWorkbench using three case studies: SwiftPhylo, a phylogenetic tree assembly workflow; SwiftGECKO, a comparative genomics workflow; and RASflow, a RASopathy analysis workflow. We analyze each workflow from both computational and scientific domain perspectives, by using queries to a provenance and annotation database. Some of these queries are available as a pre-built feature of the BioWorkbench web application. Through the provenance data, we show that the framework is scalable and achieves high-performance, reducing up to 98% of the case studies execution time. We also show how the application of machine learning techniques can enrich the analysis process

newYAWL : achieving comprehensive patterns support in workflow for the control-flow, data and resource perspectives

The Workflow Patterns provide a conceptual foundation for the control-flow, data and resource perspectives of process-aware information systems (PAIS). In this paper we present newYAWL, a reference language for PAIS based on the workflow patterns. newYAWL radically extends previous work undertaken on the YAWL language and provides a comprehensive formal description of how the complete set of workflow patterns can be realized and integrated in the context of an operational PAIS

Designing and using an information infrastructure in radiology : prepare - share - compare IT

Radiology informatics is changing the way that work practice and planning of work are conducted in the radiology department and between radiology departments. Today, the need for sharing of information between organizations is increasing in parallel with the growth in both patient mobility and healthcare specialization. This sets demands on the information infrastructure in use regarding interoperability issues as well as distribution problems with the focus on metadata quality in the information shared. The new shared approach marks the beginning of a change from a local to an enterprise workflow. The challenges are to develop useful and secure services for different groups related to the radiological information infrastructure. It involves continuous negotiation with people concerning how they should collaborate within the enterprise. Therefore qualitative action research methods and quantitative methods were used in this thesis. The objective of this research was to understand how to use distributed information in a change process where radiology departments needed to invest in and use new technology that had not been used before in their local workflow, using simulation as a tool for changes in work practice. A further objective was to understand what types of metadata were needed for a radiology enterprise workflow across organizational boundaries. The quality of metadata used in the information infrastructure is critical to the use and benefits this enterprise workflow will gain throughout the patient healthcare process. It is concluded that only a few items of shared metadata are needed to support an effective enterprise workflow. This means that the technical fully working cross-organizational solution is hindered to function as an information infrastructure for collaboration between all departments and hospitals in the region if the quality of metadata elements is poor. It would thus be warranted that as many elements of metadata that has a national semantic definition taken by agencies become mandatory across the society. All semantic standardization initiatives, e.g. Snomed CT are enablers for cross-organizational workflow. It is of importance for interoperability that the agreed semantic models are implemented both in vendor systems and in local workflow so they can support new cross-organizational services around the patient’s health as shown in VGR. In conclusion, this thesis shows that the transformation of digital data in local systems into virtual information in an information infrastructure creates greater potential for using the digital information to improve planning and logistics within the information infrastructure in use, regardless of the local systems involved. Quality control and management of the data make it possible to derive information from it. Quality work should be done based on an information model grounded in useable standards and legal sources for metadata elements. The key success factor seems to be creating and holding an information infrastructure with quality of the metadata elements. Implementing an information infrastructure takes time and therefore needs special attention from a strategic viewpoint

Dental health care technologies: factors affecting technology adoption and latest information technology solutions

The thesis studies the factors affecting information technology adoption in dental health care. The scope is on information systems used in diagnostics and clinical work. Besides the factors affecting technology adoption, the possibilities and challenges of two important technologies, 3D virtual workflow and CAD/CAM are introduced. The 3D technologies are studied further through a case study, Planmeca Romexis 3D applications. Through the thesis, the effects of the technologies for the whole value chain from the technology vendor to the patient are evaluated. Also, the economical side of the technologies is discussed. The thesis is based on a broad literature review. At first, dental clinical workflow is introduced to understand what kind of environment the information systems are facing. Second, a theoretical framework for technology adoption including Technology Acceptance Model by Davis (1989) and related theories is constructed, followed by a more throughout literature review on the factors characteristic to clinical environment and dental health care. The literature review is supported with the case study and interviews of specialists. The literature review finds various factors for technology adoption in dental health care. These factors are divided into usability and functional factors, work efficiency factors, learning curve factors and social & organisational factors. The general theoretical framework can be seen rather applicable for dental health care scope, but some factors such as patient safety or dental team’s sociocultural relationships are very characteristic to dentistry. 3D virtual workflow and CAD/CAM are seen to provide advantages into dentistry, and they’re bringing solutions to the factors discussed in the thesis. The thesis founds also challenges and problems arising from these technologies. Planmeca’s solutions are providing further insight on the possibilities of real-life solutions for 3D virtual workflow. The thesis has limitations since it’s based on a literature review, but a similar Information System Management-view for information systems in dentistry is rather rare. Thus, it can provide information on which factors to take into consideration for vendors designing dental information systems as well as for organizations that are considering investing in new information systems

Investigating Implemented Process Design: A Case Study on the Impact of Process-aware Information Systems on Core Job Dimensions

Adequate process design particularly means that a process fulfills its stakeholders’ expectations. However, when designing process-aware information systems (PAIS), one stakeholder and his expectations are often neglected: the end user. Frequently, this results in end user fears, which, in turn, lead to emotional resistance and a lack of user support during process and information system design. In order to overcome this vicious circle it becomes necessary to better understand the impact of operationalized process design on the end users’ work profile. This paper presents the results of a case study at two Dutch companies.We investigate in which way employees perceive the impact of a newly introduced PAIS based on workflow management technology with respect to five job dimensions: skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback from the job

Simulation Models for Analyzing the Dynamic Costs of Process-aware Information Systems

Introducing process-aware information systems (PAIS) in enterprises (e.g., workflow management systems, case handling systems) is associated with high costs. Though cost estimation has received considerable attention in software engineering for many years, it is difficult to apply existing approaches to PAIS. This difficulty particularly stems from the inability of existing estimation techniques to deal with the complex interplay of the many technological, organizational and project-driven factors which emerge in the context of PAIS. In response to this problem, this paper proposes an approach which utilizes simulation models for investigating the dynamic costs of PAIS engineering projects. We motivate the need for simulation, discuss the development and execution of simulation models, and give an illustrating example. The present work has been accomplished in the EcoPOST project, which deals with the development of a comprehensive evaluation framework for analyzing PAIS engineering projects from a value-based perspective

J Biomed Inform

PurposeDespite years of effort and millions of dollars spent to create a unified electronic communicable disease reporting systems, the goal remains elusive. A major barrier has been a lack of understanding by system designers of communicable disease (CD) work and the public health workers who perform this work. This study reports on the application of User Center Design representations, traditionally used for improving interface design, to translate the complex CD work identified through ethnographic studies to guide designers and developers of CD systems. The purpose of this work is to: (1) better understand public health practitioners and their information workflow with respect to communicable disease (CD) monitoring and control at a local health department, and (2) to develop evidence-based design representations that model this CD work to inform the design of future disease surveillance systems.MethodsWe performed extensive onsite semi-structured interviews, targeted work shadowing and a focus group to characterize local health department communicable disease workflow. Informed by principles of design ethnography and user-centered design (UCD) we created persona, scenarios and user stories to accurately represent the user to system designers.ResultsWe sought to convey to designers the key findings from ethnographic studies: 1) that public health CD work is mobile and episodic, in contrast to current CD reporting systems, which are stationary and fixed 2) health department efforts are focused on CD investigation and response rather than reporting and 3) current CD information systems must conform to PH workflow to ensure their usefulness. In an effort to illustrate our findings to designers, we developed three contemporary design-support representations: persona, scenario, and user story.ConclusionsThrough application of user centered design principles, we were able to create design representations that illustrate complex public health communicable disease workflow and key user characteristics to inform the design of CD information systems for public health.1P01CD000261-01/CD/ODCDC CDC HHS/United States5T15LM007442/LM/NLM NIH HHS/United StatesT15 LM007442/LM/NLM NIH HHS/United StatesT32 NR007106/NR/NINR NIH HHS/United StatesT32NR007106/NR/NINR NIH HHS/United States2014-08-01T00:00:00Z23618996PMC407704