Enactment Of Business Processes Research Articles

Flexible runtime support of business processes under rolling planning horizons

This work has been motivated by the needs we discovered when analyzing real-world processes from the healthcare domain that have revealed high flexibility demands and complex temporal constraints. When trying to model these processes with existing languages, we learned that none of the latter was able to fully address these needs. This motivated us to design TConDec-R, a declarative process modeling language enabling the specification of complex temporal constraints. Enacting business processes based on declarative process models, however, introduces a high complexity due to the required optimization of objective functions, the handling of various temporal constraints, the concurrent execution of multiple process instances, the management of cross-instance constraints, and complex resource allocations. Consequently, advanced user support through optimized schedules is required when executing the instances of such models. In previous work, we suggested a method for generating an optimized enactment plan for a given set of process instances created from a TConDec-R model. However, this approach was not applicable to scenarios with uncertain demands in which the enactment of newly created process instances starts continuously over time, as in the considered healthcare scenarios. Here, the process instances to be planned within a specific timeframe cannot be considered in isolation from the ones planned for future timeframes. To be able to support such scenarios, this article significantly extends our previous work by generating optimized enactment plans under a rolling planning horizon. We evaluate the approach by applying it to a particularly challenging healthcare process scenario, i.e., the diagnostic procedures required for treating patients with ovarian carcinoma in a Woman Hospital. The application of the approach to this sophisticated scenario allows avoiding constraint violations and effectively managing shared resources, which contributes to reduce the length of patient stays in the hospital.

Clustering-Based Predictive Process Monitoring

The enactment of business processes is generally supported by information systems that record data about each process execution (a.k.a. case). This data can be analyzed via a family of methods broadly known as process mining. Predictive process monitoring is a process mining technique concerned with predicting how running (uncompleted) cases will unfold up to their completion. In this paper, we propose a predictive process monitoring framework for estimating the probability that a given predicate will be fulfilled upon completion of a running case. The framework takes into account both the sequence of events observed in the current trace, as well as data attributes associated to these events. The prediction problem is approached in two phases. First, prefixes of previous (completed) cases are clustered according to control flow information. Second, a classifier is built for each cluster using event data attributes to discriminate between cases that lead to a fulfillment of the predicate under examination and cases that lead to a violation within the cluster. At runtime, a prediction is made on a running case by mapping it to a cluster and applying the corresponding classifier. The framework has been implemented in the ProM toolset and validated on a log pertaining to the treatment of cancer patients in a large hospital.

A hybrid approach for aspect‐oriented business process modeling

AbstractSeparation of concerns has long been an important strategy to deal with complexity when developing a system. Some concerns (like security) are scattered through the whole system, and different modules are tangled to such concerns. These concerns are known as cross‐cutting concerns. When the system in question is a business process, cross‐cutting concerns are aimed at being encapsulated by Aspect‐Oriented Business Process Modeling. However, the state‐of‐the‐art techniques in this field lack efficient mechanisms that (1) support composition of cross‐cutting concerns that can be defined in parallel to (a part of) a process model and (2) enable specifying both mandatory and optional cross‐cutting concerns. To address these limitations, this paper proposes a new Aspect‐Oriented Business Process Modeling approach. The approach is hybrid since it is based on declarative rules to relate imperative cross‐cutting concerns and imperative business process models. The approach is explained, formally grounded with precise semantics, and used accordingly to implement the artifacts that support modeling and enactment of business processes in the proposed fashion as a proof of concept. In addition, the approach is evaluated on the basis of the Technology Acceptance Model during a workshop session. The result shows that participants perceived the approach usable and easy to use.

Optimization of Complex Elastic Processes

Business Process Management is a matter of great importance in different industries and application areas. In many cases, it involves the execution of resource-intensive tasks in terms of computing power such as CPU and RAM. Due to the emergence of Cloud computing, theoretically unlimited resources can be used for the enactment of business processes. These Cloud resources render several challenges for Business Process Management Systems to ensure a predefined Quality of Service level during Cloud-based process enactment. Therefore, new solutions for process scheduling and resource allocation are required to tackle these challenges. Within this paper, we present a novel approach to schedule business processes and optimize the used Cloud-based computational resources in a cost-efficient way, thus realizing so-called elastic processes. For that, we specify the Service Instance Placement Problem, i.e., an optimization model which defines the setting of how service instances are scheduled among resources. Through extensive evaluations we show the benefits of our contributions and compare the novel approach against a baseline which follows an ad hoc approach.

A service-based architecture for dynamically reconfigurable workflows

In the last few years, business process management systems have been employed for handling information systems of ever increasing complexity. As a consequence, the adoption of modelling languages enabling smooth and seamless transitions among the various phases of the process lifecycle, the ability of exploiting coordination schema over distributed execution contexts and the support for dynamic evolution and reconfiguration have become software engineering issues of great importance. This paper proposes the use of PN-Engine, a decentralized Petri nets execution engine, as a business process enactment engine. PN-Engine, which is based on the Jini service architecture, supports the decentralized execution of process models specified as Petri nets (PNs) enhanced with modular constructs and offers suitable mechanisms for dealing with the aforementioned design issues. PN-Engine allows to deploy and enact a new version of an existing process model without requiring the stopping/removal of older instances that are still running. The paper presents a novel approach enabling a decentralized migration procedure where concurrent portions of older instances migrate asynchronously to the new process model. Advantages of the proposed approach are demonstrated by means of an example concerning a workflow for a wine-production process.

Enhancing E-Service Collaboration with Enforcement and Relationship Management

In a business-to-business (B2B) e-service environment, cross-organizational collaboration is important for attaining the interoperability of business processes and their proper enactment. The authors find that B2B collaboration can be divided into multiple layers and perspectives, which has not been adequately addressed in the literature. Besides regular e-service process enactment, robust collaboration requires enforcement, while quality collaboration involves relationship management. These problems are challenging, as they require the enactment of business processes and their monitoring in counter parties outside an organization’s boundary. This paper presents a framework for B2B process collaboration with three layers, namely, collaboration requirements layer, business rule layer, and system implementation layer. The collaboration requirements layer specifies the cross-organizational requirements of e-service processes. In the business rule layer, detailed knowledge of these three types of process collaboration requirements is defined as business rules in a unified Event-Condition-Action (ECA) form. In the system implementation layer, event collaboration interfaces are supported by contemporary Enterprise JavaBeans and Web Services. Based on this architecture, a methodology is presented for the engineering of e-service process collaboration from high-level business requirements down to system implementation details. As a result, B2B process collaboration can be seamlessly defined, enacted, and enforced. Conceptual models of various layers are given in the Unified Modeling Language (UML). We illustrate the applicability of our framework with a running example based on a supply-chain process and evaluate our approach from the perspective of three main stakeholders of e-collaboration, namely users, management, and systems developers.

A Location-Aware Access Control Model for Mobile Workflow Systems

Workflow management systems (WfMS) are a special class of information systems (IS) that support the automated enactment of business processes. Meanwhile there are WfMS which allow the execution of tasks using mobile computers like PDA with the ability of wireless data transmission. However, the employment of workflow systems as well as mobile technologies comes along with special security challenges. One way to tackle these challenges is the employment of so locationaware access control to enforce rules that describe from which locations a user is allowed to perform which activities. The data model behind access control in termed access control model (ACM). There are special ACM for mobile information systems (IS) as well as for WfMS but no one that addresses mobile as well as workflow specific aspects. In the article we therefore discuss the specific constraints such a model should be able to express and introduce an appropriate ACM.

Dynamic business network process management in instant virtual enterprises

Nowadays, business supply chains for the production of complex products or services are likely to involve a number of autonomous organizations. The competitive market requires that these supply chains are highly agile, effective and efficient. Agility and effectiveness are obtained by forming highly dynamic virtual enterprises within supplier networks. We call these instant virtual enterprises (IVEs). The required efficiency of creating and operating IVEs can only be obtained by automated support for design, setup and enactment of business processes within these IVEs. This process support involves the dynamic composition of local processes of network members into global processes at the IVE level. This functionality goes significantly beyond traditional approaches for interorganizational workflow management. The approach, architecture and technology required for this dynamic network process management in IVEs are outlined in this paper. We show how the developed approach is applied in the automotive industry in the context of the CrossWork IST project.

Mining e‐services in P2P‐based workflow enactments

PurposeThis paper aims to explore the feasible mining and proper selection of QoS‐aware services for a P2P‐based business process enactment framework, and enhance the relevant workflow prototype. Design/methodology/approach – Through observing and analysing unpredictable dynamic changes that commonly exist in e‐service workflow, a set of QoS specifications and monitoring mechanisms in a P2P workflow framework is proposed. These specifications are an evolving extension of services' description with semantic web facilitators for P2P‐based e‐services.FindingsIt has been demonstrated that the QoS‐OWL approach can be effectively used to describe and exploit e‐services, particularly in a decentralised environment. QoS‐OWL is also able to provide the deliberation of geographic information for e‐services, and facilitates the peers' effective cooperation and automates business processes. It is recommended that the approach be adopted in the dynamic online information system environment to increase efficiency and reduce costs in running e‐services.Practical implicationsThe QoS attributes discussed in this paper are relatively typical for benchmarking purposes, so the extension of the QoS metrics specifications and related protocols need to be discussed in future work.Originality/valueThe authors propose an approach to dynamically selecting appropriate service‐oriented peers in a P2P network, where the composition of e‐services in a business process can be enhanced significantly. The approach is based on ontology and QoS perspectives, and the descriptions of services have rich semantic features in an attempt to make the service selection more intelligent and reliable. Therefore the proposal offers e‐service providers innovative initiatives to re‐engineer their business services.

Intention‐driven modeling for flexible workflow applications

AbstractDuring the early 1990s, workflow technologies were the only ones to offer a transversal integration capacity to the enterprise applications, thus allowing the representation and the enactment of business processes. However, the formalisms developed for workflow specifications were almost systematically activity oriented. Consequently, the resulting process definitions have the advantage to be easily transformable in executable code, but the disadvantage of being prescriptive and rigid. Recent works underline the needs in term of flexible and adaptive workflows, whose execution can evolve according to situations that cannot always be prescribed. In fact, a flexible representation of business processes is an asset to maintain the fit between business processes and their supporting systems in an evolving environment. This article proposes a conceptual framework for an intention‐driven modeling of flexible workflow applications. The purpose of the underlying modeling formalism is to define an integration/orchestration for islands of business process chunks and their support systems in order to create and to maintain the fit between them. The modeling framework offers the ability to represent in the same business process definition the well‐structured process chunks as well as the ill‐structured or ad hoc ones. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Towards Adaptive Workflow Enactment Using Multiagent Systems

Advances in Information Technology have created opportunities for business enterprises to redesign their information and process management systems. The redesigned systems will likely employ some form of workflow management system. Workflow management systems exactly enact business processes described in a process description language. Unfortunately, such strict adherence to the prescribed workflow makes it impossible for the system to adapt to unforeseen circumstances. We firmly believe that the historic trajectory of software development paradigms and IT advancements will establish multiagent systems as the workflow enactment mechanism of the future. In this paper we provide a critical survey of workflow, workflow description languages, web services and agent technologies. We propose that workflow description languages and their associated design tools can be used to specify a multiagent system. Specifically, we advance the idea that the Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL4WS) can be used as a specification language for expressing the initial social order of the multiagent system, which can then intelligently adapt to changing environmental conditions.

Protocols for processes

The modeling and enactment of business processes is being recognized as key to modern information managment. The expansion of Web services has increased the attention given to processes, because processes are how services are composed and put to good use. However, current approaches are inadequate for flexibly modeling and enacting processes. These approaches take a logically centralized view of processes, treating a process as an implementation of a composed service. They provide low-level scripting languages to specify how a service may be implemented, rather than what interactions are expected from it. Consequently, existing approaches fail to adequately accommodate the essential properties of the business partners in a process (the partners would be realized via services)---their autonomy (freedom of action), heterogeneity (freedom of design), and dynamism (freedom of configuration).Flexibly represented protocols can provide a more natural basis for specifying processes. Protocols specify what rather than how ; thus they naturally maximize the authonomy, heterogeneity, and dynamism of the interacting parties. We are developing an approach for modeling and enacting business processes based on protocols. This paper describes some elements of (1) a conceptual model of processes that will incorporate abstractions based on protocols, roles, and commitments; (2)the semantics or mathematical foundations underlying the conceptual model and mapping global views of processes to the local actions of the parties involved; (3) methodologies involving rule-based reasoning to specify processes in terms of compositions of protocols.

A reflective infrastructure for workflow adaptability

We present a flexible framework that enables workflow systems to adapt to changing conditions. The model is designed to reveal key aspects of the tasks involved in representing and enacting business processes. These fundamental characteristics are identified as state, behaviour, distribution, coordination and enactment. By isolating such core concepts in a way that allows them to be varied, we open up the general process of task coordination and execution, allowing for extensions in a planned way. By suitable manipulation of each of these aspects, at the appropriate level, a workflow system may be extensively modified in a way that minimises the effect of such change upon other aspects of the system.

Experience representing, integrating and automating telecom business processes in a workflow engine environment

Because of the cost and complexity of building bespoke telecom service management systems, telecommunications management developers are moving toward the use of off-the-shelf componentware to satisfy their management requirements. However, a crucial problem with such an approach is the ability to integrate components to realise integrated management solutions. A second trend is that increasingly telecommunication management operators are becoming 'business process driven'. This can be evidenced by the increased activity in business process based solutions and customer facing processes, e.g., TMFs Telecommunications Operations Map. The central idea being that management systems must become more 'service' oriented, i.e., must be integrated across traditional management functional areas to support the business objectives, e.g., service fulfilment, service assurance, service accounting rather than just implement stand alone applications. This paper surveys the different approaches for representing the knowledge contained in business processes and evaluates the strengths/weaknesses in the various approaches. Then the paper proposes the innovative design of a component based Workflow Management system which enables not only the evolution/change of business process but facilitates the ease of introduction of different knowledge representation techniques to support the automated enactment of business processes in a distributed (CORBA based) environment. Finally the paper evaluates the applicability of workflow based telecoms management solutions based on its usage in telecom information service trials.