Automata-based trustworthiness analysis method for business process

Nowadays, the problem in business process management (BPM) is that BPM systems should both be easy to use for business process developers and be based on a sound formal method. Business process management systems are often based on semiformal modeling techniques such as event-driven process chains (EPC) or UML. Unlike semiformal modeling techniques, the process calculus CSP comes with mature verification sup- port. Surprisingly little work has been done on using CSP for business process modeling and management. In this paper, we present our approach to business process management, which is based on the observation that CSP is well suited not only for specifying business processes and verifying work???ows but also for executing work???ows using our CSP4J framework. We report on a work???ow server, which is specified in CSP and implemented using our CSP4J framework. The server accepts work???ows that are modeled in CSP and also implemented using CSP4J. This allows us to integrate the mature verification support of CSP into both the management system itself and the development process of the end users’ business process definitions.

Recent studies explore context-awareness as a new paradigm and principle in BPM (Business Process Management). However, there is still a lack of consensus on the meaning of context related concepts in the BPM area. While most people tacitly understand what context is and use context to optimize business processes, they find it hard to define. Researchers commonly provide their own definitions according to their own background and expertise, which leads to diversity and inconsistency. Hence, this paper provides a comprehensive understanding of the context concepts of context-aware BPM based on an extensive literature review. We excessively review and analyze existing definitions of the context concept, and propose a pyramid model to depict the trade-off between generalization and specification. Definitions of context-aware business processes have been derived from various perspectives of how a business process can potentially benefit from being aware of its context, which can be broadly classified to three categories including process flexibility, personalized services and knowledge-intensive tasks. Then we propose our definitions of the context of a business process and the context-aware business process, which can be used in general applications. In addition, context related concepts of business processes, including context-sensitive, -aware and -adaptive business processes, are clarified and distinguished to set the theoretical foundation of context-aware BPM consistently.

In September 2008, Origin completed a $9.6 billion transaction with ConocoPhillips to form Australia Pacific LNG (APLNG)—a fifty-fifty coal seam gas to liquified natural gas joint venture. As the upstream operator, Origin is planning to ramp up production to more than five times present production levels. In a two-year period, Origin tripled Queensland CSG production volumes to 300 Tj per day. This expansion was based on existing business systems and processes and it was recognised that additional capability would be required to further ramp up production and associated activities. A project was commissioned to build operational capability and capacity—processes, systems, organisation design and people—to efficiently drill the required number of production wells. This priority project addressed a business objective to step up the drilling of CSG production wells from approximately 60 to 350–400 per annum. The transformational solution comprised three key components: business process re-engineering, technology development, and organisational re-design. The solution included the definition, documentation and transformation of business processes—this ensured consistent, repeatable and scalable processes capable of drilling of 350–400 wells per annum. The processes are now enabled by resource scheduling and document management systems that are fully integrated. The resultant well delivery system is managed by a team that provides the business with decision making information regarding the resource use required to support the delivery of the APLNG commitments. Given the transformational nature of the solution, the delivery of all three components was under-pinned with change management impact assessments, education, communications and deployment. The total solution was deployed in August 2010.

During 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 orad hocones. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This paper proposes an approach to the emergency work order dispatch problem in electric power utilities. Given the available repair crews and their already assigned commercial orders, mathematical models based on definitions and criteria related to utilities' business processes describe the complete assignment in order to serve each pending emergency work order. One key aspect refers to the real-time constraint, what means that computational system must be able to handle a solution to the emergency work order dispatch problem with response times in the order of milliseconds or even microseconds. First business process definition is presented, followed by the emergency work order dispatch problem description. Preliminary experiments have shown how suitable can be the proposed definition when addressing the referred problem. Finally, conclusions point out the main contributions of this work.

Проблемы мировой экономики, вызванные пандемией COVID-19, оказали существенное влияние на уровень и качество жизни населения многих стран. Корректно идентифицированные и выстроенные бизнес-процессы, способность их быстрого анализа и корректировки в условиях новой действительности позволили государствам снизить риски стагнации национальной экономики. В статье исследованы теоретические аспекты бизнес-процессов, история их становления, разобраны труды наиболее ярких представителей научного мира, посвятивших себя этой проблеме, сформулированы основанные на их достижениях и недостатках новые определения актуальные на сегодняшний день, а также представлено авторское определение бизнес-процессов. The problems of the global economy caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have had a significant impact on the level and quality of life of the population of many countries. Correctly identified and structured business processes, the ability to quickly analyze and adjust them in the conditions of the new reality allowed states to reduce the risks of stagnation of the national economy. The article examines the theoretical aspects of business processes, the history of their formation, analyzes the works of the most prominent representatives of the scientific world who devoted themselves to this problem, formulates new definitions based on their achievements and shortcomings that are relevant today, and also presents the author's definition of business processes.

Current workflow products can support more complex modeling of business processes, workflow engine mechanism is well researched, but the link between organizational elements and process activities is less well understood. In access control, most products can only support fixed role-based task assignment, not enough in considering more complex security policies, such as DSOD, task binding of duties, and temporal constraints, that important in dynamic workflow system. This paper examines workflow access control requirement in practice, analyzes WFMC workflow meta-model, and adopts the R&TBAC approach to separate role-based organization and task-based authorization-step modeling, and especially designs an agent-based dynamic policy enforcement mechanism to bridge the gap. The intelligent task assigning agent to be defined as a virtual participant in workflow process definition, and creating within workflow engine controlled available task instance, acts as to evaluate task dynamic authorization policy to provide eligible task participant role-set based on its information model. This paper gives a formal specification of the workflow authorization model, and designs the agent information model, assigning policy model, and function model in detail. The modeling approach can widely adapt to various existing workflow systems and can automatically change policy as enterprise organization or business process definition need changing.

This paper proposes a conceptual model that incorporates: (a) a business process entity, (b) a business process lifecycle aligned with the proposed entity, and (c) a compliance framework that focuses on the degree of process compliance to imposed regulatory standards. The pursuing objective is to systematize business processes through a conceptual entity applicable to Business Process Management (BPM) practices and compliance-checking. The applied methodology involves the review, interpretation and comparison of business process definitions, structural elements and their interrelations, acknowledged BPM lifecycles and compliance rules. The initial findings lead to the proposal of a contextual business process structure that sets the boundaries of business process as a clearly defined entity. The business process entity encompasses continuous modification of its design based on the feedback it generates. Additionally, a comparative analysis of prominent BPM lifecycles resulted in a proposed ‘business process lifecycle’ that allows for a better alignment of the included cycle steps. The proposed business process entity is also related with process compliance practices to produce compliance-aware business processes. The introduced conceptual model can assist professionals in apprehending core business process features, focusing on process flexibility and redesign. It can also serve as a preliminary prototype for checking the degree of compliance between a business process and the applicable compliance rules.

This chapter presents the concept of development and management of SOA applications within the configurable service platform which supports all phases starting from business process definition. The unique features of the platform include: business process compatibility, easy reconfiguration of composition schemes, visual support for requirements and service definition, QoS assessment (including communication services) and service execution control. Moreover, it illustrates how effective tools for SOA management may be developed within the SOA paradigm itself, and how this paradigm may be used to achieve their interoperability and flexibility.

In service-oriented environment, a number of providers may offer functionally identical services with different Quality of Service (QoS). Sometimes, some providers lure customers to discover and select their services by deception. To address the unreliability of web services and other issues, we propose a reliable composite service computation framework, which integrates business process definitions with composite service selection and service binding. The proposed framework utilizes flexible business process definitions to support flexible selections of service composition during business process enactment. In the end, a case study was illustrated to verify the effectiveness of this technology.

Firstly this paper introduced the development and application present state of domestic E-Government platform. Then XML Data-Bus, Ajax, Struts2.0, Spring2.5, Hibernate3.2 and lightweight MVC execution framework ASSH were introduced. A general design scheme of E-Government public and basic platform based on XML Data-Bus and ASSH was given. To verify the design scheme's feasibility, flexibility and security, the National Informatization Standard Management and Service System (NISMSS abbr.) was given as an application case. IDE and core coding implementation of ASSH framework integration were mainly discussed. Key methods, steps and related coding of business process management jBPM4.0-based and system security management RBAC-based were illuminated in detail. The result indicated that the design and development scheme put forward by the dissertation had good performance and flexibility in business process definition, graphical presentation and monitor and security access control policy. Finally some previews about the E-Government platform were given.

Managing product reliability in business processes ‘under pressure’

This study aims to identify current traditional retail business processes (As-is), align, and integrate their business processes based on Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). This ERP implementation minimizes recordkeeping errors and saves time supporting traditional retail businesses. The design of a new business process (To-Be) was built considering the ERP business process. This study used the system development process method of ERP, which includes the stages of planning, requirements analysis, design, detailed design, and implementation. In addition, a gap/fit analysis was carried out to compare the current business process analysis (As-Is) and the proposed business process (To-Be) after using the ERP Odoo system. This study found that the business processes at AH Mart traditional retail require several changes (re-engineering), from manual and unintegrated business processes to a computerized and integrated model between divisions. Differences in business processes that occur at AH Mart are in the warehouse, cashier, and treasurer. In the warehouse, the implementation of stock-opname with ERP can use barcodes, so the product data is neatly recorded in the system, and the number of incoming and outgoing products can be appropriately detected. The cashier uses a barcode system, and the total calculation of customer payments is automatically accumulated. Making financial reports by the treasurer is more effective because the report data for each division is already stored in the same database. This research provides insight into changing from conventional business processes to business processes based on Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). ERP business process can be adapted by traditional retail in the modern era.

Exploration methods in business process re-engineering

Organizations need to be agile and flexible to meet the continuous changes. Business Process Management (BPM) is harnessing the continuous changes suffered by organizations in the value chain and, therefore, in their processes. Simulation models offer the ability to experience different decisions and analyze their results in systems where the cost or risk of actual experimentation are prohibitive. BPMN models are not directly executable nor is it possible to simulate their behavior in various input parameters. This paper proposes the application of model-driven engineering (MDE) to integrate the definition of business processes with Discrete- Event Simulation (DES) as a tool to support decision-making. We propose a platform independent DES metamodel and a set of rules, to automatically generate the simulation model from BPMN 2.0 based business process in accordance with previous metamodel.