Intention‐driven modeling for flexible workflow applications

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.

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.

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.

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.

For enhancing the trustworthiness of business processes, a business process definition method is given and a kind of dynamic semantics is appointed to this business process definition. The dynamic semantics is expressed as a finite state automata. According to the dynamic semantics, algorithms are proposed to analyze the trustworthiness of the business processes.

The selection and design of composite materials and its associated manufacturing process is an extremely complex task. This paper presents a Business Decision Support System, implemented in terms of the BPMN and DMN standards, which provides a unified environment supporting interoperability for modelling the phenomena involved in material modelling. The proposed system successfully integrates materials modelling methodologies and knowledge-based systems with business process for decision making. This proposed use of the BPMN and DMN standards provides the missing link between business processes, materials science and engineering workflows in the context of composite material modelling, opening a new horizon in engineering industrial applications. The paper is complemented with an application case, which describes an initial example of successful representation of business process from the material modelling domain that includes decision models implemented with DMN in the chemical domain.

Enterprises are confronted with a continuously increasing data load. Examples of such data include sensor data, office files, e-mails, guidelines, and business data. In turn, this data overload makes it difficult for knowledge workers to identify information needed to perform their tasks in the best possible way. To remedy this information underload and to optimally utilize enterprise data, the latter must be aligned with business processes. In fact, process-related information and business processes are usually managed separately. On one hand, enterprise content management systems, shared drives, and Intranet portals are used fss management technology is used to design and enact business processes. With process-oriented information logistics (POIL), this chapter presents an approach for bridging this gap. In particular, POIL enables the process-oriented and context-aware delivery of process-related information to knowledge workers. We also present use cases and proof-of-concept prototypes to demonstrate the application and benefits of POIL.

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.

The objective of the research described in this paper is to extend current agent platforms in order to provide both explicit, message-based and implicit, document-based communication and coordination within a uniform framework, and to make this unified framework available for the agent-oriented design and enactment of business processes. This is achieved by interfacing a BDI agent platform with an underlying peer-to-peer (P2P) platform, where the P2P framework is used to virtualize certain sections of the belief sets of the BDI agents; after a review of existing approaches to integrate multiagent with P2P concepts, a prototype technical realization is presented using two state-of-the art platforms: the Jack BDI agent platform and the P2P Business Resource Management Framework (BRMF) platform.

Workflow management systems (WfMS) are designed to enable the enactment of business processes, i.e. to extract and maintain the process logic between business applications. Within a workflow management solution, heterogeneous applications are connected through a given workflow definition. Future development efforts must aim to establish interoperability between different WfMS. This leads straight to interoperability problems of two types: in a technical point of view, one WfMS has to be able to abstract from a concrete implementation (programming language, hardware, etc.) of another WfMS. In a semantic point of view, WfMS have to agree on the execution semantics of a workflow definition. We try to cope with the semantic interoperability problem by defining a workflow repository which enables extensible communication between WfMS. To understand the notion and the central function of repositories, a short history of metadata systems is given. Based on a modular architecture of WfMS, a repository is developed and sketched in a CORBA compliant style. This repository shows the expressiveness and the idea of extensibility of our interoperability approach.

The definition and simulation of processes using Work flow technology is becoming more and more popular. In that way, to standardize and simulate complex processes it is needed high expressive languages able to be automatically executed by computers. Currently, high expressive languages that can be used for simulation and definition of processes are based in Petri Nets technology. Nevertheless, Petri Nets are difficult to understand by processes experts with no computer science training or expertise and are more complex to be executed than other simpler approaches like finite automatons. In this paper an automata based mathematical tool with a high expressivity capacity is presented. This framework is easier to understand also by non computer science expert sand its automation is simple in order to allow to experts to define formal work flows that can be easily automated.

Many requirements for a business process depend on the workflow execution data that includes common data for all the population of processes, state of resources, state of processes, etc. The natural way to specify and implement such requirements is to put them into the process definition. In order to do it, we need: (1) a generalised workflow metamodel that includes data on the workflow environment, process definitions, and process execution; (2) a powerful and flexible query language addressing the metamodel; (3) integration of a query language with a business process definition language. In this paper the mentioned workflow metamodel together with the business process query language BPQL is presented. BPQL is integrated with the XML Process Definition Language (XPDL) increasing significantly its expressiveness and flexibility. We also present practical results for application of the proposed language in the OfficeObjects® WorkFlow system.

In services-oriented agile supply chain management, more and more complex business process require for automatic and flexible ability to react to the dynamic market environ- ment. In this paper, we proposed the distributed and adaptive workflow model and implementation. The workflow model focus on the BPEL4WS based workflow composition, the DAIM-S based business domain ontology, XSRL based business process monitoring and workflow performance, semantic ECA based workflow exception handling, and petri net based workflow analyzing. In the final, we proposed intelligence multi-agents based distributed and adaptive workflow model implementation. I. INTRODUCTION Business organizations confront an increased global com- petition, which forces companies to improve their efficiency and flexibility for adapting the dynamic business environment. The agility of a company's response to customer demand has been recognized as a critical success factor to meet the global competition. Agile supply chain management has become an effective and significant measure to enhance competitive advantage of modern enterprises (1)(2). To satisfy and respond quickly to the business requirements, we proposed loosing coupled services-oriented agile supply chain management ar- chitecture. At the same time, more and more complex business process require for automatic and flexible ability to react to dynamic market and strengthen their ability to compete in global business society. To meet such requirement, we pro- posed a distributed and adaptive workflow model in services- oriented agile supply chain management. In this model, we apply BPEL4WS as services workflow definition language to composite the complex business process, and discussed the DAIM-S based business domain ontology, XSRL based business process monitoring and workflow performance, se- mantic ECA based workflow exception handling, and Petri net based workflow analyzing. In the final, We also proposed the coordinated intelligent agents based distributed and adaptive workflow implementations in services-oriented agile supply chain management.