基于本体的动态工作流系统

项目采办过程中通常涉及很多企业和组织,信息量大,时问长,工作流过程控制比较复杂。本工作流系统把工作流模型以知识的形式存储在本体知识库中,用户可以通过知识库服务器动态修改过程模型,实现它的动态运转。组织模型和资源模型也能够随着根据业务的变化及时做出调整。同时可以利用逻辑推理功能插件扩展对知识的推理功能,在任务转移提供辅助信息,实现工作流的智能运转。     

A reference model for team-enabled workflow management systems

Today's workflow systems assume that each work item is executed by a single worker. From the viewpoint of the system, a worker with the proper qualifications selects a work item, executes the associated work, and reports the result. There is usually no support for teams, i.e., groups of people collaborating by jointly executing work items (e.g., the program committee of a conference, the management team of a company, a working group, and the board of directors). In this paper, we propose the addition of a team concept to today's workflow management systems. Clearly, this involves a marriage of workflow and groupware technology. To shed light on the introduction of teams, we extend the traditional organizational meta model with teams and propose a team-enabled workflow reference model. For this reference model and to express constraints with respect to the distribution of work to teams, we use object constraint language (OCL).     

Evolutionary design of user interfaces for workflow information systems

In this paper we argue that user interface design should evolve from iterative to evolutionary in order to support the user interface development life cycle in a more flexible way. Evolutionary design consists of taking any input that informs to the lifecycle at any level of abstraction and its propagation through inferior and superior levels (vertical engineering) as well as the same level (horizontal engineering). This lifecycle is particularly appropriate when requirements are incomplete, partially unknown or to be discovered progressively. We exemplify this lifecycle by a methodology for developing user interfaces of workflow information systems. The methodology involves several models (i.e., task, process, workflow, domain, context of use) and steps. The methodology applies model-driven engineering to derive concrete user interfaces from a workflow model imported into a workflow management system in order to run the workflow. Instead of completing each model step by step, any model element is either derived from early requirements or collected in the appropriate model before being propagated in the subsequent steps. When more requirements are elicited, any new element is added at the appropriate level, consolidated with the already existing elements, and propagated to the subsequent levels. A workflow editor has been developed to support the methodology.     

Decomposition of interdependent task group for concurrent engineering☆

In concurrent engineering, project tasks generally involve the establishment of multifunctional teams in which team members from different functional departments interact in every phase of development tasks to design the products and processes concurrently. However, the increasing complexity of product development and design process often come up with large interdependent task groups due to the nature of the concurrent strategy. The large size of interdependent task groups makes it difficult for team organization and thus delays the project completion. This calls for the intention of this research to develop an effective model to: (1) transform the binary task relationships into the quantifiable task coupling strengths; and (2) to decompose the large interdependent task group into smaller and manageable sub-groups. Design structure matrix (DSM), analytic hierarchy process and cluster analysis are used to represent task relationships, quantify task couplings and decompose large size of task groups. Clustering performance between numerical DSM versus binary DSM is evaluated using a simulation experiment. The experimental results show that the clustering performance of using numerical DSM is better than the use of binary DSM. The effectiveness of this model is then demonstrated by an illustrative example. The result shows that our proposed model is capable of decomposing the large coupling task group that helps team organization for concurrent engineering project.     

基于Agent的移动计算环境下的柔性工作流模型

由于传统的工作流系统无法适应移动计算环境的要求,于是该文提出了基于Agent的柔性工作流模型,讨论了移动Agent的设计逻辑及工作机制,并从移动数据库的设计入手来分析移动计算环境下的工作流体系结构,结合原型系统MAFlow分析了柔性工作流的组织及运行机制,并着重研究了工作流的柔性设计及系统中的工作流引擎、任务管理服务器、角色库、同步服务器及异常处理服务器的工作原理。     

Network-aware support for mobile distributed teams

An experiment evaluated network-aware support to increase understanding of the factors that are important for successful teamwork in mobile geographically dispersed teams of first responders. Participants performed a simulated search and rescue team task and were equipped with a digitized map and real-time situation updates on the location of other participants in a simulated disaster area. The connection to a server, however, was made deliberately error-prone, leading to occasional losses of network connections. Consequently, participants were not provided with real-time situation updates. To deal with this problem we equipped team members with a network-aware application that signaled network loss to them and adapted the graphical representation of the location of fellow team members accordingly to the quality of location information present. The experiment revealed that presenting complete and reliable geospatial information improves teamwork. Teams connected to a server over a fast and reliable link showed superior performance over teams with no network connection whatsoever to a server. The present study failed, however, to demonstrate the added value of network-aware support when teams had to collaborate in the presence of an unreliable communications infrastructure. Although participants indicated a slight preference for the network-aware application over a condition without support signaling network loss, no differences were observed in team process and outcome measures.     

Supporting small teams in cooperatively building application domain models

Building application domain models is a time-consuming activity in software engineering. In small teams, it is an activity that involves almost all participants, including developers and domain experts. In our approach, we support the knowledge engineering activity by reusing tagging done by team participants when they search information on the Web about the application’s domain. Team participants collaborate implicitly when they do tagging because their individually created tags are collected and form a folksonomy. This folksonomy reflects their knowledge about the domain and it is the base for eliciting domain model elements in the knowledge acquisition and conceptualization tasks in a consensual way. Experiments provide evidence that our approach helps team participants to build richer domain models than if they do not use our software tool. The tool allows the reuse of simple annotations as long as users learn about the application’s domain.     

无线传感器网络中带延时的一致性时间同步

针对无线传感器网络(WSNs)中节点间通信存在传输延迟,影响同步精度的情况,将加权平均应用于相对时钟斜率的计算,提出了一种带延时的一致性时间同步算法.该算法中每个传感器节点通过与邻居节点通信交换时钟信息,根据一致性理论更新时钟参数,从而到达时间同步的目的.研究了在假定传输延时服从正态分布的情况下对一致性时间同步算法的影响,提出的算法降低了延时对同步精度的影响,Matlab仿真验证了该算法的有效性.     

Adaptive synchronization of an uncertain complex dynamical network

This note further investigates the locally and globally adaptive synchronization of an uncertain complex dynamical network. Several network synchronization criteria are deduced. Especially, our hypotheses and designed adaptive controllers for network synchronization are rather simple in form. It is very useful for future practical engineering design. Moreover, numerical simulations are also given to show the effectiveness of our synchronization approaches.     

基于状态信息的分散式工作流管理系统模型的研究

传统的工作流程管理系统通常以主从式架构为基础,在这个架构下当有众多的流程在执行时服务器会成为整个系统的性能瓶颈,服务器出现故障时所有的流程无法继续执行。为了解决这个问题,提出了基于工作流程状态信息的分散式执行模型,以流程状态信息作为流程的执行依据,利用流程状态信息和触发事件的概念来判断每一个流程活动的执行条件和状态,并采用令牌机制解决资源竞争的问题,在此架构下不需要任何的独立分配工作的机制,没有任何一部主机会成为系统性能的瓶颈。讨论了系统的架构设计、关键技术及系统实现,并以订货出货流程为例进行了验证,为复杂的工作流程提供了一种新的管理及控制模式。     

Simultaneous engineering for self-directed work teams implementation: A case study in the electronics industry

Simultaneous engineering is based on the interaction between different disciplines and parallel consideration of design with production. This is usually taken as embracing product design and the manufacturing process (for instance in design for manufacturability), or product, manufacturing process and maintenance strategies (in design for maintainability) etc. A simultaneous engineering approach can also be of great value, however, for work organisation change, and vice versa. This paper describes a case study where problems with the product design and manufacturing process meant that these were redesigned in parallel with the implementation of self-directed work teams. In fact, the involvement of the first pilot team in this redesign enabled them to gain much of the confidence, skills and knowledge they required to operate successfully, and early decisions on the form and management of the team structure were supported.

Relevance to industry

Team work is an increasingly common choice of manufacturing and other companies to organise their production and assembly activities. The case study in this paper illustrates lessons in implementation of self-directed work teams. Moreover, it is emphasised that such implementation can be a fundamental part of simultaneous engineering, and also that teams themselves can contribute to concurrent product and process development.     

工作流机制在田野考古地理信息系统中的应用

传统的田野考古工作,如审批与文档管理等主要是以手工操作为主,而基于工作流的田野考古地理信息系统可以实现对田野考古流程和文档的信息化管理,提高科学性与工作效率。系统采用Client/Server结构,设计与实现了田野考古流程管理与定制、表单管理与定制、工作流监督控制以及运行控制等多种功能,并用田野考古国家规范作为实例介绍了该工作流机制的应用,取得了满意的效果。     

Feature-based design in a distributed and collaborative environment

In this paper, a client/server framework has been developed to enable a dispersed team to accomplish a feature-based design task collaboratively. A manipulation client+modelling server infrastructure has been proposed to facilitate consistent primary information modelling for multiple users and adaptability of the system. Based on feature-to-feature relationships, a distributed feature manipulation mechanism has been proposed to filter the varied information of a working part during a co-design activity to avoid unnecessary re-transferring of the complete large-size CAD files each time when any interactive operation is imposed on the model by a client. In the distributed environment, a design task and the engaged clients are organised and connected through working sessions generated and maintained dynamically with a collaborative server. The environment is open to downstream manufacturing analysis modules to achieve distributed concurrent engineering.     

First-generation ASCI production visualization environment

Visualizing terascale computing results requires considering the entire data visualization system. The systems approach presented in the paper decreases the time needed to prepare large data sets for visualization four-fold. To explore the issues of very large data sets, the paper first considers an analyst's workflow and presents a systems engineering method to improve the workflow process. Then it presents a systems perspective of information flow with an emphasis on team environments. A case study demonstrates an application of the systems approach to improve an early production visualization system     

CAIRO: a concurrent engineering meeting environment for virtual design teams

This paper presents the software architecture for a next generation concurrent engineering environment that helps geographically separated designers and engineers to collaborate effectively. The paper highlights research in computer-supported collaboration work (CSCW) based on various models of group interaction, social communication theory, negotiation theory and distributed artificial intelligence concepts. The paper describes CAIRO (Collaborative Agent Interaction and synchROnization) system, a distributed conferencing architecture for managing designers and engineers in a distributed design meeting. The CAIRO system allows designers and engineers to work together in virtual teams by supporting multi-media interactions over computer networks. CAIRO aids the concurrent engineering effort by relaxing the physical, temporal and organizational constraints experienced in traditional design meeting environments. CAIRO provides both media synchronization, i.e. ensuring that all information exchanged between users is synchronized, and agent synchronization, i.e. ensuring effective structuring and control of a distributed conference. This paper also details the prototype CAIRO system with a detailed example, illustrating its use in concurrent design settings.     

Supporting collaborative engineering design

The complexity of current engineering design demands the collaboration of specialists. Collaboration involves both communication between and coordination among members of a design team. Currently, design collaboration is carried out through the use of schedules, specifications and drawings which only capture the end results of the design process. They fail to record important design information such as the reasoning behind design decisions. In this paper, we describe a tool CADS, that supports collaboration in engineering design. CADS is based on an extension to the Axiomatic Design methodology which not only captures the design elements but also the rationale used to conceive them. CADS serves as a shared database of design information with facilities that support communication and coordination in engineering design.Currently at the Media Laboratory, MIT.     

基于改进AOV网的轻量级工作流模型研究与设计

针对现有工作流模型在应对大型复杂系统时的不足,引入轻量级模型的概念,提出一种基于改进AOV网的轻量级工作流模型以满足大型复杂业务流程的工作流管理需求。在对模型进行详细定义与设计的同时,给出了流程调度中关键的两个算法--分支的调度算法及汇聚的同步算法以确保流程的准确运行。通过对一个具体实例的流程建模分析,体现了模型的轻量级优势并采用图论的分析手段对模型进行静态及动态验证,证明了模型的合理性。     

Virtual team awareness and groupware support: an evaluation of the TeamSCOPE system

This paper overviews a Web-based collaborative system called TeamSCOPE that has been designed to support awareness needs of globally distributed teams. Four types of awareness needs of virtual teams are defined and the awareness support features of TeamSCOPE are described. The usage patterns of eight globally distributed engineering design teams are outlined, and evaluation results are provided. Findings illustrate how group process interacts with technology to create design challenges in the support of virtual team awareness needs.