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

Enabling Flexible and Robust Business Process Automation for the Agile Enterprise

During the last decade process-aware information systems (PAISs) have become increasingly popular to digitize business processes and to effectively support them at the operational level. In many application domains, however, PAISs will not be accepted by users if rigidity comes with them. Ensuring PAIS robustness, in turn, becomes extremely complicated if high flexibility demands need to be fulfilled. To cope with the dynamic nature of business processes, we developed AristaFlow, a next generation process management technology that enables comprehensive process lifecycle support. In addition to standard process management services, AristaFlow can handle exceptions, change the execution of running business cases on the fly, efficiently deal with uncertainty, and support the evolution of business processes over time. This paper discusses how AristaFlow assists the various stakeholders of a PAIS to cope with errors and exceptional situations, while still meeting robustness needs. In particular, we focus on new error handling procedures and capabilities utilizing the flexibility provided by ad-hoc changes

Home country effects of offshoring. A critical survey on empirical literature.

The International fragmentation of production processes is of rising importance. One part of this fragmentation involves the relocation of a production process from a home- to a new host country. This literature survey deals with the effects of such relocations on the home country. First of all, we try to conceptualize the terms and definitions most frequently used in this context which are "outsourcing", "offshore outsourcing" and "offshoring". Despite the fact that there is little textual documentation dealing directly with the phenomena of offshoring and offshore outsourcing we try to give an overview of possible empirical literature to which one can regard to. Including FDI literature we try to cover empirical literature which can provide helpful insight on the effects of a relocation to foreign countries on the home country in connection with wages, skill upgrading, prices, profits, taxes and unions. (author's abstract)Series: Discussion Papers SFB International Tax Coordinatio

High-frequency dynamics in the near-surface region studied by inelastic x-ray scattering: The case of liquid indium

Inelastic x-ray scattering in grazing angle geometry provides a novel tool for studying the surface and bulk lattice dynamics in a single experiment by varying the incidence angle around the critical angle of total reflection. At very small incidence angles (below the critical angle), it is possible to study the collective dynamics in a subsurface region of a few nanometres at interatomic length and time scales. An experimental study on liquid indium in the near-surface region is presented here and the results are analysed within a theoretical framework, based on classical hydrodynamics for the height-height fluctuations (capillary waves and non-propagating fluctuations) and generalized hydrodynamics for the bulk density fluctuations. The investigation reveals the presence of capillary waves in the inelastic x-ray spectra as an additional contribution at zero-energy transfer and a modification of the bulk density fluctuation contribution. A longer structural relaxation time and a larger longitudinal viscosity with respect to bulk indium are observed, similarly to related studies in confined liquids. © IOP Publishing Ltd and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft

Change Mining in Adaptive Process Management Systems

The wide-spread adoption of process-aware information systems has resulted in a bulk of computerized information about real-world processes. This data can be utilized for process performance analysis as well as for process improvement. In this context process mining offers promising perspectives. So far, existing mining techniques have been applied to operational processes, i.e., knowledge is extracted from execution logs (process discovery), or execution logs are compared with some a-priori process model (conformance checking). However, execution logs only constitute one kind of data gathered during process enactment. In particular, adaptive processes provide additional information about process changes (e.g., ad-hoc changes of single process instances) which can be used to enable organizational learning. In this paper we present an approach for mining change logs in adaptive process management systems. The change process discovered through process mining provides an aggregated overview of all changes that happened so far. This, in turn, can serve as basis for all kinds of process improvement actions, e.g., it may trigger process redesign or better control mechanisms

Colloidal hydrodynamic coupling in concentric optical vortices

Optical vortex traps created from helical modes of light can drive fluid-borne colloidal particles in circular trajectories. Concentric circulating rings of particles formed by coaxial optical vortices form a microscopic Couette cell, in which the amount of hydrodynamic drag experienced by the spheres depends on the relative sense of the rings' circulation. Tracking the particles' motions makes possible measurements of the hydrodynamic coupling between the circular particle trains and addresses recently proposed hydrodynamic instabilities for collective colloidal motions on optical vortices.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, submitted to Europhysics Letter

IMPETUS: Implementing HELP in the Upper Ouémé basin

Regional climate models that take into account land-use changes indicate that in the future, a general decrease in rainfall, together with prominent surface heating, can be expected for sub-Saharan Africa and the region north of the Sahara until 2050. Due to high population growth, land use changes rapidly and influences water availability and water demand. In this context, the research project IMPETUS (‘An Integrated Approach to the Efficient Management of Scarce Water Resources in West Africa’) offers a range of options for sustainable management of different components of the hydrological cycle. Target areas are the Ouémé basin in Benin and the Drâa catchment in Morocco. This paper concentrates on the Ouémé basin.Based on plausible scenarios of future economic, demographic, and climate developments, the effects of land use, land cover change, climate change, and demographic development on water availability and water demand are quantified. Scenarios of future water availability and water demand for the Upper Ouémé (Benin) catchment are discussed. To calculate water availability, the output of a regional climate model was linked to a hydrological model that also considered land use change calculated by a cellular automata model. Future water requirements were computed by linking population growth and per capita water demand, which was derived from a regional survey. Furthermore, the need for water for animal husbandry was considered.The results of the ‘business as usual’ scenario, combined with IPCC Scenarios A1B and B2, through the year 2045 are presented. The results reveal a significant decrease in water availability (surface water and groundwater) due to a decrease in rainfall and a significant increase in evapotranspiration. Although total water consumption increases strongly, it represents only about 0.5% of the yearly renewable water resources. Comparing these data, it may be concluded that water scarcity is not a problem in Benin. However, water availability shows high temporal variations due to the rainy and the dry seasons. Even if physical water scarcity is not a limiting factor, access to water in some parts of the catchment is limited due to economic factors.Keywords: HELP, IMPETUS, Benin, Morocco, Decision Support Systems, global change, information systems, loosely coupled models, problem clusters, scenario development, water availability, water deman

High-frequency subsurface and bulk dynamics of liquid indium

We have performed bulk and surface-sensitive inelastic x-ray scattering experiments on liquid indium with 3 meV energy resolution. The experimental data are well reproduced within a generalized hydrodynamic model including structural and microscopic relaxation processes. We find a longitudinal viscosity of 22 mPa s in the near-surface region compared to 7.4 mPa s in the bulk. The origin of the increase is associated with a slowing down of the collective dynamics in a subsurface region of 4.6 nm. © 2007 The American Physical Society

Refactoring Process Models in Large Process Repositories.

With the increasing adoption of process-aware information systems (PAIS), large process model repositories have emerged. Over time respective models have to be re-aligned to the real-world business processes through customization or adaptation. This bears the risk that model redundancies are introduced and complexity is increased. If no continuous investment is made in keeping models simple, changes are becoming increasingly costly and error-prone. Though refactoring techniques are widely used in software engineering to address related problems, this does not yet constitute state-of-the art in business process management. Process designers either have to refactor process models by hand or cannot apply respective techniques at all. This paper proposes a set of behaviour-preserving techniques for refactoring large process repositories. This enables process designers to eectively deal with model complexity by making process models better understandable and easier to maintain