Toward Business Domain-Specific eCollaboration: Requirements for Integrated Virtual Cooperation in Product Costing

In enterprises, limitations of time and place vanish more and more due to virtual collaboration. As a business domain, product costing is characterized by a high demand for communication, coordination, and information exchange. A prior study revealed that virtual cooperation has not been integrated into this particular business area and that there is a need to find ways to enable and support such specific forms of virtual collaboration. To navigate the challenge of integrating virtual cooperation support directly into the core process of a particular business domain we introduce Business Domain-Specific eCollaboration. We present a requirements model for integrated virtual cooperation in product costing derived from expert interviews. It shows what an integrative approach can offer in order to link collaboration support directly into the process of a particular business domain

Research on key techniques of flexible workflow based approach to supporting dynamic engineering design process

Error on title page - correct year of award is 2015 not 2013.Engineering design process (EDP) is a highly dynamic and creative process, and the capability in managing an EDP is considered as a major differentiating factor between competing enterprises. The most important prerequisite to establish an engineering design process excellence is a proper management of all the design process activities and the associated information. The most important impact in recent years on the EDP and on the activities of designers has come from computer-based data processing. Workflow, the automation of a business processes in whole or part, is a useful tool for modelling and managing a business process which can be reprensented by a workflow model (computerized process definition). By considering the dynamic characteristics of EDP, an EDP management system must be flexible enough to support the creative and dynamic EDP. After the introduction of engineering design process and its new trend, as well as flexible workflow technology, reviews of both engineering design process and its supporting flexible workflow technology shows that there is a need for a holistic framework to automate and coordinate design activities in the creative and dynamic EDP, and the flexible workflow technology should also be improved comprehensively in flexibility and intelligence in order to support better engineering design management. By introducing the relations between the EDP and flexible workflow, a virtual workflow and an autonomic flexible workflow built upon autonomic computing is investigated, and an innovative engineering design process management framework based on multi-autonomic objects flexible workflow is proposed. For the flexible workflow modelling in the framework, a dynamic instance-based flexible workflow modelling method is proposed for multi-autonomic objects flexible workflow. In order to improve the intelligence of flexible workflow, after examining the principle of flexible workflow intelligence in flexible workflow, a new flexible workflow autonomic object intelligence algorithm based on both extended Mamdani fuzzy reasoning and neural network is proposed, weighted fuzzy reasoning algorithm, as well as precise and fuzzy hybrid knowledge reasoning algorithm is designed; a bionic flexible workflow adaptation algorithm is proposed to improve the intelligence of autonomic object flexible workflow further. According to the characteristic of EDP, such as cross-enterprises and geographical distribution, and in order to realize the flexible execution of distributed flexible workflow engine, a distributed flexible workflow engine architecture based on web service is proposed and a flexible workflow model description method based on extended WSDL (Web Service Description Language) and BPEL4WS (Business Process Execution Language for Web Services) is proposed. A flexible workflow prototype system supporting engineering design process is implemented according to the proposed EDP management framework in Microsoft VS.Net 2005 environment. The framework is demonstrated by the application in an EDP of a MTO company, and it shows that the proposed framework can support the creative and dynamic process in an efficient way. Finally, the strengths and weakness of the framework as well as the prototype system is discussed based on the results of the evaluation, and the proposed areas of future work are given.Engineering design process (EDP) is a highly dynamic and creative process, and the capability in managing an EDP is considered as a major differentiating factor between competing enterprises. The most important prerequisite to establish an engineering design process excellence is a proper management of all the design process activities and the associated information. The most important impact in recent years on the EDP and on the activities of designers has come from computer-based data processing. Workflow, the automation of a business processes in whole or part, is a useful tool for modelling and managing a business process which can be reprensented by a workflow model (computerized process definition). By considering the dynamic characteristics of EDP, an EDP management system must be flexible enough to support the creative and dynamic EDP. After the introduction of engineering design process and its new trend, as well as flexible workflow technology, reviews of both engineering design process and its supporting flexible workflow technology shows that there is a need for a holistic framework to automate and coordinate design activities in the creative and dynamic EDP, and the flexible workflow technology should also be improved comprehensively in flexibility and intelligence in order to support better engineering design management. By introducing the relations between the EDP and flexible workflow, a virtual workflow and an autonomic flexible workflow built upon autonomic computing is investigated, and an innovative engineering design process management framework based on multi-autonomic objects flexible workflow is proposed. For the flexible workflow modelling in the framework, a dynamic instance-based flexible workflow modelling method is proposed for multi-autonomic objects flexible workflow. In order to improve the intelligence of flexible workflow, after examining the principle of flexible workflow intelligence in flexible workflow, a new flexible workflow autonomic object intelligence algorithm based on both extended Mamdani fuzzy reasoning and neural network is proposed, weighted fuzzy reasoning algorithm, as well as precise and fuzzy hybrid knowledge reasoning algorithm is designed; a bionic flexible workflow adaptation algorithm is proposed to improve the intelligence of autonomic object flexible workflow further. According to the characteristic of EDP, such as cross-enterprises and geographical distribution, and in order to realize the flexible execution of distributed flexible workflow engine, a distributed flexible workflow engine architecture based on web service is proposed and a flexible workflow model description method based on extended WSDL (Web Service Description Language) and BPEL4WS (Business Process Execution Language for Web Services) is proposed. A flexible workflow prototype system supporting engineering design process is implemented according to the proposed EDP management framework in Microsoft VS.Net 2005 environment. The framework is demonstrated by the application in an EDP of a MTO company, and it shows that the proposed framework can support the creative and dynamic process in an efficient way. Finally, the strengths and weakness of the framework as well as the prototype system is discussed based on the results of the evaluation, and the proposed areas of future work are given

Pervasive computing at tableside : a wireless web-based ordering system

Purpose &ndash; The purpose of this paper is to introduce a wireless web-based ordering system called iMenu in the restaurant industry. Design/methodology/approach &ndash; By using wireless devices such as personal digital assistants and WebPads, this system realizes the paradigm of pervasive computing at tableside. Detailed system requirements, design, implementation and evaluation of iMenu are presented.Findings &ndash; The evaluation of iMenu shows it explicitly increases productivity of restaurant staff. It also has other desirable features such as integration, interoperation and scalability. Compared to traditional restaurant ordering process, by using this system customers get faster and better services, restaurant staff cooperate more efficiently with less working mistakes, and enterprise owners thus receive more business profits. Originality/value &ndash; While many researchers have explored using wireless web-based information systems in different industries, this paper presents a system that employs wireless multi-tiered web-based architecture to build pervasive computing systems. Instead of discussing theoretical issues on pervasive computing, we focus on practical issues of developing a real system, such as choosing of web-based architecture, design of input methods in small screens, and response time in wireless web-based systems.<br /

Technical Conception and Implementation of an IT-System supporting the flexible Distribution of Documents within a large scale Sales Organization

This thesis aims to discuss and present an IT system to distribute documents within a large scale sales organization. Therefore, different sales applications on the market are analyzed and described. Based on this analysis, requirements for the IT system are defined. The requirements are divided into client-side and server-side requirements. The server application is realized using an existing ECM system to support the content throughout the enterprise content life cycle. Therefore, an evaluation of existing ECM systems is performed with a criteria catalog based on the requirements. Afterwards, the conception and architecture of the IT system is described, followed by further insights into the technical implementation of the mobile application. Finally, the features of the overall IT system are discussed and an outlook on how to extend the IT system is presented

Heart Failure Monitoring System Based on Wearable and Information Technologies

In Europe, Cardiovascular Diseases (CVD) are the leading source of death, causing 45% of all deceases. Besides, Heart Failure, the paradigm of CVD, mainly affects people older than 65. In the current aging society, the European MyHeart Project was created, whose mission is to empower citizens to fight CVD by leading a preventive lifestyle and being able to be diagnosed at an early stage. This paper presents the development of a Heart Failure Management System, based on daily monitoring of Vital Body Signals, with wearable and mobile technologies, for the continuous assessment of this chronic disease. The System makes use of the latest technologies for monitoring heart condition, both with wearable garments (e.g. for measuring ECG and Respiration); and portable devices (such as Weight Scale and Blood Pressure Cuff) both with Bluetooth capabilitie

An inter-organization workflow management system for virtual enterprises

Master'sMASTER OF SCIENC

Proactive services ecosystem framework

Dissertation presented to obtain the degree of Doctor in Electrical and Computer Engineering, specialization on Collaborative Enterprise NetworksCollaborative-Networks (CN) have experienced a fast evolution in the last two decades. The collaboration among independent entities or professionals supported by Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has attracted the research community to establish the conceptual basis for this scientific discipline. Service Orientation has been one of the key selected paradigms for that conceptual basis. Nevertheless, the service concept itself does not have a common understanding in the Business and ICT worlds. In the former, client satisfaction, resources management and business process models are some example concerns, whilst the later deals with interoperability, remote function calling or communication protocols. If for example an enterprise provides some service, it may hire specialists to wrap such service into web-services, expecting to reach worldwide potential new clients. In fact, nowadays Web Services and Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) are the technological elements most commonly used. However, these are passive elements in the sense they do not perform any action towards pursuing business interests, which constitute a limiting factor from a business perspective. Another approach for the above mentioned enterprise is to follow the Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) approach, as the pro-activity is a keyword in such contexts. Nevertheless, as MAS approaches are not so commonly used and not so robust yet, the worldwide potential set of new clients is reduced; which also constitutes an inhibitor factor from the business perspective. This dissertation proposes a Pro-Active Services Ecosystem Framework, gathering inspiration from both the SOA and MAS research areas, trying to bridge the business and ICT worlds through the base concepts for the creation of a Services’ Ecosystem where business services are represented in a pro-active manner towards pursuing business interests, like finding collaboration opportunities or improving the chances each CN member has to see its services selected among competitors, for example. This work also includes a prototype system applied / validated in the area of a Professional Virtual Community of Senior Professionals

A language for information commerce processes

Automatizing information commerce requires languages to represent the typical information commerce processes. Existing languages and standards cover either only very specific types of business models or are too general to capture in a concise way the specific properties of information commerce processes. We introduce a language that is specifically designed for information commerce. It can be directly used for the implementation of the processes and communication required in information commerce. It allows to cover existing business models that are known either from standard proposals or existing information commerce applications on the Internet. The language has a concise logical semantics. In this paper we present the language concepts and an implementation architecture