Workflow Management Coalition Research Articles

Using object oriented analysis design workflow engine for manufacturing industry in IoT

Plan and build a workflow management system to integrate allows you to design workflow processes and build request forms, no coding skills required. Easy to implement and learn in Internet of Thing (IoT). Integrify will save you time and effort by eliminating lengthy process development. There are many related standardized solutions in (IoT), but are no features to cross-over manufacture industry, virtualized organization flow control, front-end development tools and are not easy to customize. So use flexibility and easy to maintain, and cost down are the main consideration for workflow management in company. The proposed method of this research is based upon J2EE technology to design workflow management engine, using Wf-MXL message format standard of Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC) and describe information exchange format in multi-organizations workflow to complete product design. The experimentation used workflow engine in IoT, network product manufacture from product development to product design. The result of this research innovation factor of the paper, apply workflow engine to product design flow for network products in Industrial Science Park. Use the customized business process management system function to adjust business’ ability to speed up product development time and meet user requirements, and to reduce the product development cost.

A Component-based Product Line for Workflow Management Systems


 
 
 This paper presents a component-based product line for workflow management systems. The process followed to design the product line was based on the Catalysis method. Extensions were made to represent variability across the process. The domain of workflow management systems has been shown to be appropriate to the application of the product line approach as there are a standard architecture and models established by a regulatory board, the Workflow Management Coalition. In addition, there is a demand for similar workflow management systems but with some different features. The product line architecture was evaluated with Rapide simulation tools. The evaluation was based on selected scenarios, thus, avoiding implementation issues. The strategy that has been used to populate the architecture and experiment with the product line is shown. In particular, the design of the workflow execution manager component is described.
 
 

Design of Workflow Subsystem in Drawing Management System

Drawing Management System (DMS) has begun to be used more and more widely in modern enterprise and public institution. It has become one of the necessary tools to improve image file management efficiency. A subsystem model based on three layer of structure is put forward in this paper which meets Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC) standard. The model consists of workflow interaction, process management system, message mechanism, workflow engine. Each module finishes their own job to realize the auto run of DMS’s files.

Aircraft Product Data Traceability Technology Based Workflow

Throughout the product lifecycle stages of aircraft development, in order to meet the aircraft product data unique, complete, dynamic, and non-redundant in Product Data Management (PDM) system, and adapt to the effective management of product data in the aircraft development process, the early realization of the aircraft development process co-design. On the basis of the International Workflow Management Coalition (of WFMC) about workflow definition, this paper presents a workflow-based aircraft product data retrospectively theory.

Research and Application of Collaborative Modeling for Prefecture-County Integrated System Based on Workflow Engine

In order to implement the information flow and verification process in collaborative modeling for prefecture-county integrated system based on workflow, the workflow engine is embedded in the system. On the base of the Workflow Management Coalition Specification and Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA), the paper describes the way to implement the workflow engine, interface service between the engine and CORBA middleware, and the automation of the verification process in the prefecture-county integrated system.

Research on the realization method of workflow engine in enterprise information management

PurposeThis paper aims to discuss in detail a feasible realization method of workflow engine for enterprise information management on the basis of database technology.Design/methodology/approachUnder the guidance of workflow management coalition (WfMC), the data model of the workflow engine is first presented based on the given process model, in which the attributes of process, activity and its relationships with role, application, workflow relation data and transfer condition are marked out. Then the basic control principles of the workflow engine are designed based on the necessary tables of process instances and activity instances, in which the control method of process instance and activity instance are discussed in detail including the creation, startup, management or status evolvement of the instance.FindingsIn the research, the workflow engine is successfully programmed as this realization method on the development platform of SQL server 2000 and Visual Studio 2005 and the results show the effectiveness of the workflow engine for inventory information management.Originality/valueThe paper gives a feasible realization method for business process management in enterprises using the advanced workflow technology, which can assign flexibility to the information management and improve the whole performance of an enterprise while facing changing market requirements.

Polynomial Time Verification of Behavioral Inheritance for Interworkflows Based on WfMC Protocol

SUMMARY The Workflow Management Coalition, WfMC for short, has given a protocol for interorganizational workflows, interworkflows for short. In the protocol, an interworkflow is constructed by connecting two or more existing workflows; and there are three models to connect those workflows: chained, nested, and parallel synchronized. Business continuity requires the interworkflow to preserve the behavior of the existing workflows. This requirement is called behavioral inheritance, which has three variations: protocol inheritance, projection inheritance, and life-cycle inheritance. Van der Aalst et al. have proposed workflow nets, WF-nets for short, and have shown that the behavioral inheritance problem is decidable but intractable. In this paper, we first show that all WF-nets of the chained model satisfy life-cycle inheritance, and all WF-nets of the nested model satisfy projection inheritance. Next we show that soundness is a necessary condition of projection inheritance for an acyclic extended free choice WFnet of the parallel synchronized model. Then we prove that the necessary condition can be verified in polynomial time. Finally we show that the necessary condition is a sufficient condition if the WF-net is obtained by connecting state machine WF-nets.

A Version Control Approach for Workflow-Alteration in Collaborative Design

The workflow management system should be flexible enough to manage workflow changes caused by new partnerships, new technologies, and new strategies in collaborative design. Therefore, this paper attempts to introduce the version concept of configuration management into the workflow management system to handle this problem. In this study, the baseline is applied to record the sequence of tasks in a workflow and the version number of the baseline is given whenever the workflow is created. Whenever any change happens, the version number of the task or baseline will be modified accordingly. Both version numbers of the baseline and the tasks are checked while the workflow is being processed, so that the user could notice any differences in the tasks or workflow and decides whether to use the newly changed workflow or to keep the old version. A JADE development platform was applied to develop a prototype system and the architecture was based on Workflow Management Coalition. A scenario was shown in this paper to verify the feasibility of this study, and the result showed that users can choose whether to use the modified workflow baseline or not, for any running processes. This approach increases the workflow flexibility for collaborative design projects.

An Agent-Based Model for Autonomic Coordination of Inter-Organizational Business Processes

Inter-Organizational Workflow (IOW) aims at supporting the collaboration between several autonomous and heterogeneous business processes, distributed over different enterprises or organizations. Coordination of these processes is a fundamental issue that has been mainly addressed in a static context, but it still remains open in a dynamic one such as the Internet in which IOW applications are more and more enacted nowadays. In such a context, Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) are known to be a natural solution for modeling IOW since they provide adequate abstractions and specific mediators to cope with IOW coordination. Consequently, this paper provides an agent-based model for coordinating business processes involved in a dynamic IOW. This model is a triplet (E, M, R). E is the set of coordinated entities. It corresponds to the different business processes that may be published, discovered or deployed by IOW partners. M is the media supporting coordination. It is a multi-agent architecture compliant with the Workflow Management Coalition architecture and integrating specific components devoted to coordination issues. Finally, R is the set of rules governing the coordination. In our context, R is described through an organizational model aiming at structuring the interaction among the coordinated entities and the different components of the architecture.

The design of a JADE-based autonomous workflow management system for collaborative SoC design

Given a fast changing electronics goods marketplace, designers of integrated circuits and components need to be more competitive, efficient, flexible, and use collaborative workflow to reduce time-to-market and a project’s life cycle. In recent years, agent-based workflow management systems (WfMS) have been widely used to monitor and control business design processes. In this paper, intelligent agents are applied to the collaborative system-on-chip (SoC) design environment. The proposed JADE-based autonomous workflow management system (JAWMS) uses a workflow coordination mechanism and an agent integration mechanism to enable the analysis, management and interaction of automated design processes. The workflow coordination mechanism uses five domain specific agents to perform the workflow enactment services and a generic agent to control the system flow logic. The system kernel of JAWMS follows the specifications of the workflow reference model provided by the workflow management coalition (WfMC). The agent integration mechanism supports an agent to interact with other JADE-based agent platforms and to coordinate and monitor workflow coordination messages. All agents are written in the Java language using the JADE platform and work together to perform flexible, adaptive and dynamic design tasks in an autonomous and collaborative way. JAWMS facilitates SoC design and team interaction in a collaborative but distributed product development environment.

Combining workflow and PDM based on the workflow management coalition and STEP standards: the case of axalant

Product data management (PDM) current technology has several pitfalls such as lack of compliance of workflow modules to standards as well as lack of interoperability between these systems. This paper illustrates the extension of the current workflow management system part of the PDM system axalant to support engineering processes management. The extension was based on an analysis of the workflow management coalition and STEP standards and, through the extension described in the paper, now axalant complies with these standards. Because of this it is now possible to exchange workflow data with existing workflow systems on the market. In this paper the two standards are analysed, the required workflow architecture is specified, and the resulting implementation is described. The necessary enhancements include the extension of the data model of axalant, the modification of the corresponding software, the modification of the user interface and the link to the interface between axalant and ProView, which helps to generate graphical process definitions. Major achievements consist of the enhancement of process design through the creation of building blocks (split- and join-operations) as well as the enhancement of organizational structure through the usage of roles as a resource for process activities. Moreover, the paper adds flexibility for axalant to handle changes, and axalant is able to generate workflow templates and ad-hoc processes and to communicate with external workflow systems.

An ArgoUML metamodel extension for the workflow systems

The Unified Model Language (UML) has nine diagrams. One of them is the activity diagram. This allows the modeling of business processes. A business process is a set of logically related tasks executed to achieve a business result. Workflow systems are those systems based on software that allow automating total or partially a business process. Workflow is defined as a set of methods and technologies that offer facilities for the modeling and administration of diverse processes that happen inside a company. The Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC) has established a standard that allows the interoperability among applications workflow. The proposed standard includes a model of the workflow processes, Workflow Metamodel, and a language of specification of processes in XML (XPDL). ArgoUML is a CASE tool for the analysis and design of objects oriented software systems. ArgoUML uses NSUML metamodel implementing the UML metamodel defined by the Objet Management Group (OMG). The ArgoUML tool is open source and it allows building all the types of defined diagrams in UML. In this work, we propose an extension of the NSUML, the core of ArgoUML metamodel. In this way, the ArgoUML incorporates the possibility to model and to simulate workflow processes.

The application of UML to the design of processes supporting product configuration management

Product configuration management (PCM) is an important issue for complex products with long life cycles. In this paper a unified-modelling-language (UML)-based approach is introduced to define a PCM process model developed, as part of the Framework V DIECoM project, for use in the aerospace and automotive industries. This paper presents an integrated modelling methodology that extends the semantics of UML to support the automated generation of workflow management coalition (WfMC) XML process definition language (XPDL) workflow templates from XML metadata interchange (XMI) definitions. As a result workflow definition is achieved by transforming the XMI file, representing the serialized UML model, into XPDL by the application of a customized extensible stylesheet language (XSL) stylesheet. The modelling methodology is illustrated using the change configuration management process. The process model is defined using Rational Rose and transformed into XPDL for workflow enactment using ENOVIA LCA.

ENT-surgical workflow as an instrument to assess the efficiency of technological developments in medicine

Evaluation of efficiency of technology in operation room was done almost subjectively in past. This does not fulfil the requirement of a reliable data pool. The goals of this study are a prototypic ontology for surgical procedures, a practicable form of workflow collection and the exemplary evaluation of surgical workflows by example of endonasal videoendoscopic sinus surgery (FESS). The study included altogether 38 FESS-procedures (20 patients). Surgical procedures were accomplished by 7 different surgeons with different degrees of training. For description of surgical procedures and resources, we used the standard EN1828/2001. For workflow modelling, we used the Workflow Reference Models (Workflow Management Coalition, WfMC) as a reference. 1029 different positions of the endoscope, summarized to 5 major-positions were documented. The average time in holding one endoscope position was 1.31 min. 27.1 changes of endoscope position were recorded at each side. 32% were caused by cleaning. 29 changes of surgical instruments were found. 48.3% are justified in the single-hand conception FESS. This study offers a discussion basis for development of ontology, recording and analysis of surgical workflows and their practical application. Our analysis proves the need for assistance by guiding the endoscope apart from surgeon's hand. Pre-conception details of a mechatronic system to solve the clinical requirements are based on workflow analysis. Analysis of complex surgical procedures and their modification will be a basis of future conceptions of technology in OR.

Workflow Requirements Modelling Using XML

When modelling inter-organisational workflow it is important not to make assumptions such as with regard to the formats of the data exchanged between the workflow participants or the technical infrastructures and platforms, as they can restrict the range of possible workflow management implementations. The approach presented in this paper allows for the conceptual modelling of workflow processes using primitive constructs such as nodes, rules and business documents. The paper presents both a graphical notation for modelling workflows as well as a mapping of the workflow constructs to XML models that follows the Workflow Management Coalition interoperability standards. This allows the modelled workflow to be interpreted and executed by a variety of workflow engines.

A HIERARCHICAL MEASUREMENT FRAMEWORK FOR THE EVALUATION OF AUTOMATED BUSINESS PROCESSES

The problem of performance evaluation of business processes supported by Workflow Management Systems is a recent research issue. In this paper we propose a measurement framework in which several aspects concerning the timing and working of a business process, either as a whole or in terms of its components, can be precisely quantified. Our approach is based on the workflow model introduced by the Workflow Management Coalition and introduces some fundamental measures from which a number of derived measures can be hierarchically obtained. The paper describes the basic structures and the primitive operators of the framework as well as the fundamental and derived measures. Techniques for the evaluation of complex processes are also discussed. The proposed framework is quite general and can be applied to research and commercial workflow management systems with relatively little implementation effort.

Enterprise frameworks for workflow management systems

AbstractThis paper proposes an enterprise framework for workflow management (WFM) systems based on the Workflow Management Coalition generic architecture. In addition, it presents one smaller object‐oriented framework for task scheduling. This framework is obtained by refining one of the packages of the overall framework. The task scheduling framework was designed following the concept of model framework as in Catalysis. This sort of framework can be used as a template to generate code components within an application domain. According to this approach we can develop WFM components that can interoperate within a well‐defined enterprise framework. This paper also presents the process of developing interoperable code components from model frameworks. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Workflow interoperability standards for the Internet

Efforts toward defining a standard for workflow interoperability began in 1994 with the Workflow Reference Model from the Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC). From that model other standardization efforts have evolved: from OMG's jointflow specification to the simple Workflow Access Protocol. The WfMC's Wf-XML focuses on a simple subset of SWAP for a first version of a standard, with the aim of future extension.

Workflow and CIMOSA—background and case study

For an enterprise engineering application in a low-volume microsystems production we used the two Reference Architectures: CIM Open System Architecture (CIMOSA) and Work Flow Management Coalition (WfMC). We applied the emerging WFMC standard to the microsystems worklist processing to design the workflow system InfoFlow. For the manufacturing activities of the workflow participants we used the appropriate CIMOSA constructs on the level of Machine Functional Operations fitting into the WFMC architecture. The paper describes the relation between the two reference architectures comparing their concepts and constructs. The application shows that both concepts bring benefit to the enterprise engineering task and to a large degree complement each other.

The evolution of workflow standards

Evolving standards enable workflow management systems to automate and coordinate work done by independently developed applications across enterprises and over the Internet. Modern workflow can interact with such technology as OOP, business object models, APIs, XML, and HTTP. The paper discusses the standards for workflow management produced by the Workflow Management Coalition.