What Shall I Do Next? Intention Mining for Flexible Process Enactment

International audienceBesides the benefits of flexible processes, practical implementations of process aware information systems have also revealed difficulties encountered by process participants during enactment. Several support and guidance solutions based on process mining have been proposed, but they lack a suitable semantics for human reasoning and decisions making as they mainly rely on low level activities. Applying design science, we created FlexPAISSeer, an intention mining oriented approach, with its component artifacts: 1) IntentMiner which discovers the intentional model of the executable process in an unsupervised manner; 2) In-tentRecommender which generates recommendations as intentions and confidence factors, based on the mined intentional process model and probabilistic calculus. The artifacts were evaluated in a case study with a Netherlands software company, using a Childcare system that allows flexible data-driven process enactment

A Competence Knowledge Base System as Part of the Organizational Memory

Personal competences of experienced employees are the most important knowledge assets of knowledge-work oriented enterprises. Thus, it makes perfect sense to start IT support for enterprise knowledge management with a system that facilitates finding of appropriate contact persons for business tasks which require specific knowledge, experiences, or skills. We propose such a competence knowledge base system (CKBS) which builds upon an ontology-based model of competence fields, the use of which allows (i) comprehensive multi-criteria organization and queries for personal competences, (ii) complex heuristic inferences for finding knowledgeable persons in spite of vaguely speci ed information needs, and (iii) easy integration of the CKBS into an overall organizational memory information system

Towards the Definition of Domain Concepts and Knowledge through the Application of the User Story Mapping Method

Part 1: Knowledge ManagementInternational audienceThe context and problem of identifying and thereafter representing, analyzing and managing information and knowledge about an organization has always been very crucial to achieve business goals in an efficient and flexible way. Particularly in a PLM context, the issue of information overload is growing in importance. An emergent challenge consists in providing a context-driven access to federated information and knowledge and fostering cross-discipline collaborations between actors to improve quality in product development. This paper highlights key issues for knowledge definition and representation. We propose a bottom-up approach based on the User Story Mapping method (USM). This method is user-centric and leads to the definition of current and/or expected scenarios and processes along with a collaboratively agreed vision. Common concepts and viewpoints are therefore derived and generalized through a process of merging defined roles, activities and usages sequences with a focus on the product content. This bottom-up approach provides a federated and common understanding of information throughout the industrial product and process lifecycle; which combined with appropriate tools and methods, such as questionnaires, standards specifications, knowledge based approaches, etc. results in the definition of the knowledge network and domain and therefore improves capabilities for sharing and reusing this knowledge in collaborative product development. The proposed approach is applied in the context of the FP7 European project LinkedDesign (Linked Knowledge in Manufacturing, Engineering and Design for Next-Generation Production) based on three application scenarios

GRHL2 is required for collecting duct epithelial barrier function and renal osmoregulation

Collecting ducts make up the distal-most tubular segments of the kidney, extending from the cortex, where they connect to the nephron proper, into the medulla, where they release urine into the renal pelvis. During water deprivation, body water preservation is ensured by the selective transepithelial reabsorption of water into the hypertonic medullary interstitium mediated by collecting ducts. The collecting duct epithelium forms tight junctions composed of barrier-enforcing claudins and exhibits a higher transepithelial resistance than other segments of the renal tubule exhibit. However, the functional relevance of this strong collecting duct epithelial barrier is unresolved. Here, we report that collecting duct-specific deletion of an epithelial transcription factor, grainyhead-like 2 (GRHL2), in mice led to reduced expression of tight junction-associated barrier components, reduced collecting duct transepithelial resistance, and defective renal medullary accumulation of sodium and other osmolytes. In vitro, Grhl2-deficient collecting duct cells displayed increased paracellular flux of sodium, chloride, and urea. Consistent with these effects, Grhl2-deficient mice had diabetes insipidus, produced dilute urine, and failed to adequately concentrate their urine after water restriction, resulting in susceptibility to prerenal azotemia. These data indicate a direct functional link between collecting duct epithelial barrier characteristics, which appear to prevent leakage of interstitial osmolytes into urine, and body water homeostasis