Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

This paper comes back to the problem of coordination of cooperative activities with a Workflow management system. First, we describe the differences that we have noted between business processes and cooperative processes. Then we present a set of requirements for a Workflow management system that aims to support cooperative workflow, and among these requirements are high flexibility and dynamicity. Then we describe how this has been taken into account in the development of the Bonita workflow management system that proposes to remove the idea of process model to work only with process instances that can be derived from each others or that can be composed.

Today’s methods for business process modeling like extended event-process-chains only allow the definition of static graph structures. They are not flexible enough for instance to model the change management process of the Mercedes Car Group (MCG) since it requires dynamic selection of process variants, process schema evolution and their (partial) propagation on running workflows, arbitrary dynamic process jumps and changes, etc. We have developed an approach for modeling agile processes based on goals and context rules, which enables the required flexibility. Additionally it is possible to map such a process model to a run-time infrastructure for process execution.

Following the success of the first workshop, ENEI’2006 (http : // www.loria.fr/~nacer/BPM-ENEI05/ENEI-CfP.html), this second event addressed computer- supported integration and interoperability of enterprise applications and software. Indeed, enterprises are provided with collections of heterogeneous applications and software tools that were neither designed nor developed to favor their interaction and their cooperation.

The problem is more crucial when one considers networked enterprises and enterprise expansion (through, for instance, alliances or mergers). Moreover, interoperability within an enterprise and between enterprises is not limited to data interoperability but should also consider additional levels like applications, business models, process models, enterprise models, and their supporting systems and software.

Service Science is a new term for a new paradigm which aims at the solution of an obvious problem: How to make the increasing fusion of business and IT successful in a dynamically changing and risk adverse environment? This question has to be raised at different levels of abstraction, from macroeconomic viewpoints circulating around qualities of service societies to service oriented architectures of business applications. We worked in an interdisciplinary team consisting of industrial engineers and distributed system experts on the issue of business and IT alignment in a well-defined system, namely the shop-floor domain in discrete production industry. The result of this work is an ANSI/ISA 95 compliant model-driven methodology for manufacturing operations management. This methodology was evaluated by means of the realization of a SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) demo scenario for production operations management.

The “Babel tower effect”, induced by the heterogeneity of applications available in the operation of enterprises brings to a consistent lack of “exchangeability” and risk of semantic loss whenever cooperation has to take place within the same enterprise. Generally speaking, this kind of problem falls within the umbrella of interoperability between local reference information models .This position paper discuss some idea on this field and traces a research roadmap to make enterprise interoperable on the basis of this statement to face interoperability of RIMs by focusing the attention on the product. By applying a transformation between local information models into an it is possible to insure applications interoperability.

Interdependence between the subsystems of an enterprise is one of the driving reasons for integrating the enterprise. Integration attempts to manage those interdependencies so all subsystems work harmoniously together to achieve the enterprise goals. Prior to embarking on an enterprise integration project the interdependencies need to be analyzed. Unfortunately, interdependence between subsystems is still poorly conceptualized. This paper develops a modeling and measurement formalism to analyze interdependence in the enterprise. The model defines interdependence and characterizes the strength of the interdependence through relational measurement theory. The model is supported by empirical findings and illustrated through a case study. Limitations of current conceptualizations of interdependence are discussed and remedies are proposed. The primary contribution is a formal model to define and analyze interdependence in an enterprise, an activity that should occur as part of all enterprise integration projects.

This paper presents a framework and a tool devised to aid in obtaining information interoperability between enterprise applications. The approach has its foundations in the principles of model-driven architecture (MDA) and architecture-driven modernisation (ADM). The key idea is that mappings between different information formats are defined at a platform-independent level, and that the mechanisms that actually perform the needed data conversion are generated based on the mappings according to the relevant platforms of the systems at hand.

Efficient business-to-business collaboration needs an IT-architecture that allows for a preferably automatic configuration of integration services and flexibly supports different collaboration scenarios. This paper presents an approach to construct a B2B protocol from single protocol fragments that address specific collaboration aspects and that are implemented by single components of an B2B integration architecture. Therefore, the resulting B2B protocol description will be mapped to an architecture composition specification in a second step. For the purpose of protocol construction, different types of dependencies between protocols will be described as well as an abstract business transaction pattern that will be extended and refined during the B2B protocol construction process.

Business Process Management Systems are largely used nowadays. However, most process models are started from scratch, not having reuse promoted. Large enterprises not using a unique integrated system, and also some of them that do, have the same business process implemented in a variety of ways, due to differences in their units’ cultures or environments. A P2P tool is proposed as a way of cooperatively developing business processes models, minimizing the time needed to develop new models, reducing the differences among similar processes conducted in distinct organization units, enhancing the quality of models and promoting reuse.

In this paper, we propose a generic decisional model allowing to evaluate in a total way (physical flows, financial flows) plannings for any system contained in supply chain. We present a methodology for decision-making aid software conception. This methodology use modelling and simulation concept and show the interest of going towards Advanced Budgeting and Scheduling software for complexes supply chains performance evaluation. To show the generic character of the decisional approach, we apply the chaining of models suggested to the logistic process of Health Care Supply Chain. We give the metrics resulting from the modelling and the simulation of the patient treatment in the Hospital system.