Organising the business processes of a product servitised supply chain:a value perspective

This paper develops a structured method from the perspective of value to organise and optimise the business processes of a product servitised supply chain (PSSC). This method integrates the modelling tool of e3value with the associated value measurement, evaluation and analysis techniques. It enables visualisation, modelling and optimisation of the business processes of a PSSC. At the same time, the value co-creation and potential contribution to an organisation’s profitability can also be enhanced. The findings not only facilitate organisations that are attempting to adopt servitisation by helping avert any paradox, but also help a servitised organisation to identify the key business processes and clarify their influences to supply chain operations.

Situational Script Management of Business Processes with Changeable Structure

In the presented work the problem of management business-processes with changeable structure is considered and situational based approach to its decision is offered. The approach is based on situational model of management business-process according to which process is represented as a set of situations. The script defining necessary actions is connected with each situation. Management of process is carried out by means of the rules formalizing functional requirements to processes.

A knowledge driven approach towards the validation of externally acquired traceability datasets in supply chain business processes

The sharing of near real-time traceability knowledge in supply chains plays a central role in coordinating business operations and is a key driver for their success. However before traceability datasets received from external partners can be integrated with datasets generated internally within an organisation, they need to be validated against information recorded for the physical goods received as well as against bespoke rules defined to ensure uniformity, consistency and completeness within the supply chain. In this paper, we present a knowledge driven framework for the runtime validation of critical constraints on incoming traceability datasets encapuslated as EPCIS event-based linked pedigrees. Our constraints are defined using SPARQL queries and SPIN rules. We present a novel validation architecture based on the integration of Apache Storm framework for real time, distributed computation with popular Semantic Web/Linked data libraries and exemplify our methodology on an abstraction of the pharmaceutical supply chain.

Detecting EPCIS exceptions in linked traceability streams across supply chain business processes

The EPCIS specification provides an event oriented mechanism to record product movement information across stakeholders in supply chain business processes. Besides enabling the sharing of event-based traceability datasets, track and trace implementations must also be equipped with the capabilities to validate integrity constraints and detect runtime exceptions without compromising the time-to-deliver schedule of the shipping and receiving parties. In this paper we present a methodology for detecting exceptions arising during the processing of EPCIS event datasets. We propose an extension to the EEM ontology for modelling EPCIS exceptions and show how runtime exceptions can be detected and reported. We exemplify and evaluate our approach on an abstraction of pharmaceutical supply chains.

Modelling and linking transformations in EPCIS governing supply chain business processes

Supply chains comprise of complex processes spanning across multiple trading partners. The various operations involved generate large number of events that need to be integrated in order to enable internal and external traceability. Further, provenance of artifacts and agents involved in the supply chain operations is now a key traceability requirement. In this paper we propose a Semantic web/Linked data powered framework for the event based representation and analysis of supply chain activities governed by the EPCIS specification. We specifically show how a new EPCIS event type called "Transformation Event" can be semantically annotated using EEM - The EPCIS Event Model to generate linked data, that can be exploited for internal event based traceability in supply chains involving transformation of products. For integrating provenance with traceability, we propose a mapping from EEM to PROV-O. We exemplify our approach on an abstraction of the production processes that are part of the wine supply chain.

A methodology to measure coordination of business processes

Coordination of business processes is the management of dependencies where dependencies constrain how the tasks are performed. It has been traditionally done in an intuitive fashion, without paying much attention to the coordination load. Coordination load is being defined as the ratio between the time spent on coordination activities and the total task time. Previous efforts to understand and analyze coordination have resulted in mostly qualitative approaches to categorize and recommend coordination strategies. This research seeks to answer two questions: (1) How can we analyze process coordination problems to improve overall performance? (2) What guidance can we provide to reduce the coordination load of the process and consequently improve the organization's performance? Thus, this effort developed a quantitative measure for coordination load of business processes and a methodology to apply such measure. ^ This effort used a management simulation game to have a controlled laboratory environment enabling the manipulation of the task factors variability, analyzability, and interdependence to measure their impact on coordination load. The hypothesis was that the more variable, non-analyzable, and interdependent a process, the higher the coordination load, and that a higher coordination load would have a negative impact on performance. Coordination load was measured via the surrogate coordination time, and performance via profit. ^ A 22 x 31 full factorial design, with two replicates, was run to observe the impact on the variables coordination time and profit. Properly validated spreadsheets and questionnaires were used as data collection instruments for each scenario. The experimental results indicate that lower task analyzability (ρ=0.036) and higher task interdependence (ρ=0.000) lead to higher coordination load, and higher levels of task variability (ρ=0.049) lead to lower performance. However, contrary to the hypotheses postulated by this work, coordination load did not prove to be strong predictor of performance (correlation of -0.086). ^ These findings from the laboratory experiment and other lessons learned were incorporated to develop a quantitative measure, a tool (survey) to use to gather data for the variables in the measures, and a methodology to quantify coordination load of production business processes. The practicality of the methodology is demonstrated with an example.^

Simulating Business Processes of Manufacturing SMEs on the Cloud

Simulating the efficiency of business processes could reveal crucial bottlenecks for manufacturing companies and could lead to significant optimizations resulting in decreased time to market, more efficient resource utilization, and larger profit. While such business optimization software is widely utilized by larger companies, SMEs typically do not have the required expertise and resources to efficiently exploit these advantages. The aim of this work is to explore how simulation software vendors and consultancies can extend their portfolio to SMEs by providing business process optimization based on a cloud computing platform. By executing simulation runs on the cloud, software vendors and associated business consultancies can get access to large computing power and data storage capacity on demand, run large simulation scenarios on behalf of their clients, analyze simulation results, and advise their clients regarding process optimization. The solution is mutually beneficial for both vendor/consultant and the end-user SME. End-user companies will only pay for the service without requiring large upfront costs for software licenses and expensive hardware. Software vendors can extend their business towards the SME market with potentially huge benefits.

Development of business processes and sales reporting - Case recovered paper

The purpose of this research is to discover development points for business processes and sales reporting in the recovered paper sourcing organization. The processes under development are both sales and sourcing processes that were determined by the commissioning company. All of these processes have in common that there are used sales orders to organize the money flows correctly. Although the main objective is to source only recovered paper, the sourcing also brings by-products that cannot be utilized and are thus sold. As the purpose of the sales function is to only support the sourcing strategy, it should be organized as efficiently as possible. Investigating the current status of the processes and finding development points help in building proposals for enhanced process descriptions. In order that sales function could be analyzed, should the sales reporting be accurate and present the needed key figures. The current status of the processes as well as the possible problems and development ideas were researched with the help of interviews. Best practices could also be brought from other business lines in the commissioning company. The theory part was build according to relevant literature and scientific articles. The research indicates, that processes have shaped differently in sourcing organization’s business units. Local infrastructure and legislation sets certain limitations to the sourcing of recovered paper, and these circumstances cannot be changed. Customer-supplier power relations also affect to the formulation of business processes. In order to steer the processes, there has to be more internal controls. Still, the enterprise resource planning system also sets boundaries how the processes can be made more efficient.

Workflow temporal verification for monitoring parallel business processes

Workflow temporal verification is conducted to guarantee on-time completion, which is one of the most important QoS (Quality of Service) dimensions for business processes running in the cloud. However, as today's business systems often need to handle a large number of concurrent customer requests, conventional response-time based process monitoring strategies conducted in a one-by-one fashion cannot be applied efficiently to a large batch of parallel processes because of significant time overhead. Similar situations may also exist in software companies where multiple software projects are carried out at the same time by software developers. To address such a problem, based on a novel runtime throughput consistency model, this paper proposes a QoS-aware throughput based checkpoint selection strategy, which can dynamically select a small number of checkpoints along the system timeline to facilitate the temporal verification of throughput constraints and achieve the target on-time completion rate. Experimental results demonstrate that our strategy can achieve the best efficiency and effectiveness compared with the state-of-the-art as and other representative response-time based checkpoint selection strategies.

Configuring processes and business documents : an integrated approach to enterprise systems collaboration

Enterprise Systems (ES) provide standardized, off-theshelf support for operations and management within organizations. With the advent of ES based on a serviceoriented architecture (SOA) and an increasing demand of IT-supported interorganizational collaboration, implementation projects face paradigmatically new challenges. The configuration of ES is costly and error-prone. Dependencies between business processes and business documents are hardly explicit and foster component proliferation instead of reuse. Configurative modeling can support the problem in two ways: First, conceptual modeling abstracts from technical details and provides more intuitive access and overview. Second, configuration allows the projection of variants from master models providing manageable variants with controlled flexibility. We aim at tackling the problem by proposing an integrated model-based framework for configuring both, processes and business documents, on an equal basis; as together, they constitute the core business components of an ES.

On Merging Business Process Management and Geographic Information Systems : Modeling and Execution of Ecological Concerns in Processes

Business Process Management describes a holistic management approach for the systematic design, modeling, execution, validation, monitoring and improvement of organizational business processes. Traditionally, most attention within this community has been given to control-flow aspects, i.e., the ordering and sequencing of business activities, oftentimes in isolation with regards to the context in which these activities occur. In this paper, we propose an approach that allows executable process models to be integrated with Geographic Information Systems. This approach enables process models to take geospatial and other geographic aspects into account in an explicit manner both during the modeling phase and the execution phase. We contribute a structured modeling methodology, based on the well-known Business Process Model and Notation standard, which is formalized by means of a mapping to executable Colored Petri nets. We illustrate the feasibility of our approach by means of a sustainability-focused case example of a process with important ecological concerns.

Using the Business Process Execution Language for Managing Scientific Processes

This paper describes the use of the Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL4WS/BPEL) for managing scientific workflows. This work is result of our attempt to adopt Service Oriented Architecture in order to perform Web services – based simulation of metal vapor lasers. Scientific workflows can be more demanding in their requirements than business processes. In the context of addressing these requirements, the features of the BPEL4WS specification are discussed, which is widely regarded as the de-facto standard for orchestrating Web services for business workflows. A typical use case of calculation the electric field potential and intensity distributions is discussed as an example of building a BPEL process to perform distributed simulation constructed by loosely-coupled services.

Teaching business process modelling : experiences and recommendations

A curriculum for a university-level course called Business Process Modeling is presented in order to provide guidance for the increasing number of institutions who are currently developing such contents. The course caters to undergraduate and post graduate students. Its content is drawn from recent research, industry practice, and established teaching material, and teaches ways of specifying business processes for the analysis and design of process-aware information systems. The teaching approach is a blend of lectures and classroom exercises with innovative case studies, as well as reviews of research material. Students are asked to conceptualize, analyze, and articulate real life process scenarios. Tutorials and cheat sheets assist with the learning experience. Course evaluations from 40 students suggest the adequacy of the teaching approach. Specifically, evaluations show a high degree of satisfaction with course relevance, content presentation, and teaching approach.

Configurable multi-perspective business process models

A configurable process model provides a consolidated view of a family of business processes. It promotes the reuse of proven practices by providing analysts with a generic modelling artifact from which to derive individual process models. Unfortunately, the scope of existing notations for configurable process modelling is restricted, thus hindering their applicability. Specifically, these notations focus on capturing tasks and control-flow dependencies, neglecting equally important ingredients of business processes such as data and resources. This research fills this gap by proposing a configurable process modelling notation incorporating features for capturing resources, data and physical objects involved in the performance of tasks. The proposal has been implemented in a toolset that assists analysts during the configuration phase and guarantees the correctness of the resulting process models. The approach has been validated by means of a case study from the film industry.