Object-oriented design processes of electronic commerce in a multi-agent environment

Corporations are moving from traditional management into a world of agile and electronic business. Such businesses have continually sought to develop information technology (IT) systems, in order to assist in the decision-making of the business process. Due to rapid changes in the business environment this process is subject to ongoing examination. To ensure the agility of electronic commerce, business design process problems must be addressed by a team of specialists or intelligent agents, and be based on object-oriented design, characterized by computability, reusability, and exchangeability. This paper proposes a multi-agent system encompassing an object-oriented approach, to design processes for electronic commerce. This approach entails solutions to design processes, for decision-makers who are geographically separated and operate on differing computer platforms. By combining various objects, different types of design processes can be solved with the same agent-based framework, making this approach very responsive. The proposed methodology is applied to a real-world construct that involves combining objects to complete an electronic commerce model: in particular the logistics objective.     

基于工作流的J2EE遗留系统改造

为了满足用户对软件系统内部业务过程定义的定制需求,针对流行的J2EE平台,以工作流技术为基础设计了对遗留软件系统的改造平台JSPMP,JSPMP利用工作流引擎的过程定义与任务管理能力驱动系统业务流程执行,赋予软件系统在业务过程定义方面的动态可定制性.实践证明,开发者利用此方案能够迅速改造遗留系统,满足用户多样化的过程定制需求,极大地降低了改造、定制成本.     

基于工作流的J2EE遗留系统改造研究

为了满足用户对软件系统内部业务过程定义的定制需求,针对流行的J2EE平台,以工作流技术为基础设计了对遗留软件系统的改造平台JSPMP。JSPMP利用工作流引擎的过程定义与任务管理能力驱动系统业务流程执行,赋予软件系统在业务过程定义方面的动态可定制性。实践证明,开发者利用此方案能够迅速改造遗留系统,满足用户多样化的过程定制需求,极大地降低了改造、定制成本。     

SOA in reconfigurable supply chains: A research roadmap

Originally coming from the business world, service-oriented architecture (SOA) paradigm is expanding its range of application into several different environments. Industrial automation is increasingly interested on adopting it as a unifying approach with several advantages over traditional automation. In particular, the paradigm is well indicated to support agile and reconfigurable supply chains due to its dynamic nature. In this domain, the main goals are short time-to-market, fast application (re)configurability, more intelligent devices with lifecycle support, technology openness, seamless IT integration, etc. The current research challenges associated to the application of SOA into reconfigurable supply chains are enumerated and detailed with the aim of providing a roadmap into a major adoption of SOA to support agile reconfigurable supply chains.     

Acceptance of agile methodologies: A critical review and conceptual framework

It is widely believed that systems development methodologies (SDMs) can help improve the software development process. Nevertheless, their deployment often encounters resistance from systems developers. Agile methodologies, the latest batch of SDMs that are most suitable in dealing with volatile business requirements, are likely to face the same challenge as they require developers to drastically change their work habits and acquire new skills. This paper addresses what can be done to overcome the challenge to agile methodologies acceptance. We provide a critical review of the extant literature on the acceptance of traditional SDMs and agile methodologies, and develop a conceptual framework for agile methodologies acceptance based on a knowledge management perspective. This framework can provide guidance for future research into acceptance of agile methodologies, and has implications for practitioners concerned with the effective deployment of agile methodologies.     

Agile business process development: why,how and when—applying Nonaka’s theory of knowledge transformation to business process development

The traditional way of business process development is via creating a detailed model of a business process in question, acquiring an IT-system to support it, and then implementing it in the organizational practice. Acquiring a system can be done via designing and manufacturing it by the business itself, or via commissioning it to somebody else. Alternatively, a generic system can be bought and configured according to the business process model created. The traditional approach has a number of risks that become visible only during the latest phase of introducing the system in the organizational practice, e.g., when it becomes clear that the system does not fit the business and/or people who work in it. These risks could be mitigated by using an agile approach to the development of business processes. In agile approach: (a) the phases of process modeling, IT-system design, and manufacturing are merged into one, and (b) instead of using one big cycle, a series of smaller development cycles is used. The paper discusses what is needed to implement the agile approach, and in which business situations the agile approach is the most appropriate. Examples of tools to support agile development are presented and analyzed. The results presented in the paper have been achieved based on the knowledge transformation perspective along the lines suggested by Nonaka in SECI model. The modification of this model has been used to understand the risks and requirements connected to a particular process development strategy.     

基于多自主元柔性工作流的敏捷供应链研究*

为了提高敏捷供应链的动态性和敏捷性,采用多自主元柔性工作流技术构建敏捷供应链管理系统。在对敏捷供应链和柔性工作流技术进行分析的基础之上,给出用虚拟工作流和柔性工作流对敏捷供应链进行整体描述的方法。为提高柔性工作流的智能决策能力,以自主计算技术为基础,提出了基于多自主元的柔性工作流,使用多自主元的柔性工作流构建了敏捷供应链的管理框架,并通过自主元的模糊推理实例对多自主元柔性工作流的智能性进行了验证, 多自主元柔性工作流能够满足敏捷供应链管理系统快速重构和动态重组的要求。     

Manufacturing Enterprise Control and Management System Engineering: paradigms and open issues

Over several decades, control theory has developed its own set of more or less formal modelling techniques designed to automatically control the dynamic behaviour of complicated manufacturing systems and processes. The emerging Internet society is addressing new enterprise control and management integration (ECMI) challenges for agile business to manufacturing (B2M) purposes which enlarge the traditional setting of Automation Engineering to the systems engineering (SE) approach. In order to cope with the increasing complexity of integrating intelligence/information-intensive manufacturing automation within the networked manufacturing enterprise, Automation Engineering should be integrated into the systems engineering approach to achieve a holistic approach that treats in fine the technical operational manufacturing system emerging from the deployment of an ad hoc combination of formal and informal partial models. This paper emphasises that a Holonic Manufacturing Execution System Engineering (HMESE) approach should be a relevant B2M SE approach along with other relevant scientific, industrial and educational areas dealing with information and intelligence control and management issues in agile automation.     

Categorization of risk factors for distributed agile projects

ContextOrganizations combine agile approach and Distributed Software Development (DSD) in order to develop better quality software solutions in lesser time and cost. It helps to reap the benefits of both agile and distributed development but pose significant challenges and risks. Relatively scanty evidence of research on the risks prevailing in distributed agile development (DAD) has motivated this study.ObjectiveThis paper aims at creating a comprehensive set of risk factors that affect the performance of distributed agile development projects and identifies the risk management methods which are frequently used in practice for controlling those risks.MethodThe study is an exploration of practitioners’ experience using constant comparison method for analyzing in-depth interviews of thirteen practitioners and work documents of twenty-eight projects from thirteen different information technology (IT) organizations. The field experience was supported by extensive research literature on risk management in traditional, agile and distributed development.ResultsAnalysis of qualitative data from interviews and project work documents resulted into categorization of forty-five DAD risk factors grouped under five core risk categories. The risk categories were mapped to Leavitt’s model of organizational change for facilitating the implementation of results in real world. The risk factors could be attributed to the conflicting properties of DSD and agile development. Besides that, some new risk factors have been experienced by practitioners and need further exploration as their understanding will help the practitioners to act on time.ConclusionOrganizations are adopting DAD for developing solutions that caters to the changing business needs, while utilizing the global talent. Conflicting properties of DSD and agile approach pose several risks for DAD. This study gives a comprehensive categorization of the risks faced by the practitioners in managing DAD projects and presents frequently used methods to reduce their impact. The work fills the yawning research void in this field.     

The design of intelligent workflow monitoring with agent technology

In recent years, workflow technology has been widely used in business process management. With the increased complexity, uncertainty and risks in business operations, workflow monitoring is gaining growing attention in business process controlling and supervision. However, monitoring functions provided in traditional workflow systems lack flexibility, and provide little support for managing complex and dynamical changes in business process. In this paper, we propose a novel workflow monitoring approach, in which various intelligent agents work together to perform flexible monitoring tasks in an autonomous and collaborative way. By using customized monitoring plan and proactive monitoring process, the workflow monitoring activities can be executed flexibly and efficiently. The application of intelligent agents for such flexible, adaptive and collaborative workflow monitoring is investigated through an intelligent monitoring system in securities trading.     

基于Web的高性能智能快递柜管理系统

随着智慧园区及智能社区的发展,智能快递柜在其中发挥着重要作用。提出集机柜管理、运维人员管理、投资者管理、广告计划审核、广告计划发布于一体的Web智能快递柜管理系统。选用SSM框架,将表示层、控制层、业务逻辑层和数据持久层分离,以实现代码复用和敏捷式的开发方法,从而大大减少了开发成本,提升开发效率,提高系统的灵活性、可靠性、复用性和可维护性。采用先进缓存技术Redis,使用其订阅发布机制开发出一套适用于该系统的通信协议,广泛应用于广告管理和物料下发等功能模块。系统实际上线应用结果验证了其有效性。     

Integration framework for intelligent manufacturing processes

In this article, we describe a new approach to applying distributed artificial intelligence techniques to manufacturing processes. The construction of intelligent systems is one of the most important techniques among artificial intelligence research. Our goal is to develop an integrated intelligent system for real time manufacturing processes. An integrated intelligent system is a large knowledge integration environment that consists of several symbolic reasoning systems (expert systems) and numerical computation packages. These software programs are controlled by a meta-system which manages the selection, operation and communication of these programs. A meta-system can be implemented in different language environments and applied to many disciplines. This new architecture can serve as a universal configuration to develop high performance intelligent systems for many complicated industrial applications in real world domains.To whom all correspondence should be addressed.     

An overview of workflow management: From process modeling to workflow automation infrastructure

Today's business enterprises must deal with global competition, reduce the cost of doing business, and rapidly develop new services and products. To address these requirements enterprises must constantly reconsider and optimize the way they do business and change their information systems and applications to support evolving business processes. Workflow technology facilitates these by providing methodologies and software to support (i) business process modeling to capture business processes as workflow specifications, (ii) business process reengineering to optimize specified processes, and (iii) workflow automation to generate workflow implementations from workflow specifications. This paper provides a high-level overview of the current workflow management methodologies and software products. In addition, we discuss the infrastructure technologies that can address the limitations of current commercial workflow technology and extend the scope and mission of workflow management systems to support increased workflow automation in complex real-world environments involving heterogeneous, autonomous, and distributed information systems. In particular, we discuss how distributed object management and customized transaction management can support further advances in the commercial state of the art in this area. Recomended by: Omran Bukhres and e. Kühn     

An integrated case-based reasoning approach for intelligent help desk fault management

As modern business functions become more complex and knowledge-intensive, with increasing demands for quality services, there is an emerging trend for organisations to develop and deploy intelligent knowledge-based systems for mission-critical operations. Some of the challenges in successfully implementing this breed of systems depend on how well the intelligent system is integrated with conventional existing information systems and workflow, and the quality of the intelligent system itself. Developing quality expert systems lies in the effective modelling of cognitive processes of human experts and representation of various forms of related knowledge in a domain. An integrated intelligent system called the Intelligent Help Desk Facilitator (IHDF), has been developed for computer and network fault management. The system, which comprises various modules including an expert system, is successfully deployed in a problem response help desk environment of a local bank. This paper describes a cognitive-driven approach to the development of the expert system based on a hybrid knowledge representation and reasoning strategy. The approach incorporates a hybrid case-based reasoning (CBR) framework of techniques which include case memory organisation structures (discrimination networks and shared-featured networks), case indexing and retrieval schemes (fuzzy character-matching, nearest-neighbour similarity matching and knowledge-guided indexing); and an interactive and incremental style of reasoning. The paper discusses the design and implementation of the expert system component of IHDF and illustrates the appropriateness of the hybrid architecture for problem resolution and diagnostic types of applications.     

Enhancing enterprise agility by deploying agile drivers, capabilities and providers

Agility is perceived as the dominant competitive vehicle for all organizations in an uncertain and ever-changing business environment. When embracing agility, important questions must be asked. What precisely is agility and how can it be measured? How can one adopt the appropriate agile enablers to develop agility? How can one effectively assist in enhancing agility?For an enterprise to achieve agility, it is critical to create an effective integrated procedure within the business that coordinates and ensures that the agility providers can satisfy the agility capabilities and cope with drivers, ultimately transforming all of these attributes into strategic competitive edges. However, the existing literature on enterprise agility has failed to sufficiently address the relevant perspectives in such analyzes. The relationship matrix in the quality function deployment (QFD) method provides an excellent tool for deploying important concepts and linking processes. This report suggests a new agility development method for dealing with the interface and alignment issues among the agility drivers, capabilities and providers using the QFD relationship matrix and fuzzy logic. A fuzzy agility index (FAI) for an enterprise composed of agility capability ratings and a total relation-weight with agility drivers was developed to measure the agility level of an enterprise. This report also describes how this robust approach has been applied to develop agility in a Taiwanese information technology (IT) product and service enterprise. This development project revealed that the proposed framework and procedures can enhance the agility of an enterprise as well as ensure a competitive edge.     

敏捷虚拟企业组织优化中伙伴选择的建模方法

随着信息技术的发展和全球化市场竞争环境的形成,制造业的经营观念发生了深刻的改变.敏捷制造（agile manufacturing,AM）作为提高企业群体竞争能力的全新制造业生产组织模式,被认为是21世纪制造业采用的主导模式.对AM的出现和发展以及相关技术进行综述后主要讨论了在敏捷虚拟企业（agile virtual enterprises,AVE）组建过程中,支持敏捷虚拟企业（AVE）盟主进行合作伙伴选择与实现的模糊层次分析法.并对原有的层次分析法的不足做了阐述.     

Incorporating technology in service-oriented i* business models: a case study

In recent years, considerable attention has been paid to enterprise information systems. This interest is motivated by the need for achieving better integration of new technologies (hardware and software) with the business processes of an organization. Business processes have become more and more dependent on technologies because technology has a direct impact on business processes, changing the way they are performed and thus also affecting the way analysts design the software system. However, at the present time, there are still some gaps between the definition of business processes and the technologies used in the organization. In practice, organizations have carried out their business processes using different technologies; however, it is sometimes not possible to determine how technologies are useful in achieving current business goals. This is because business models do not explicitly consider the technologies in the organizational requirements. The goal of this paper is to present a systematic process for integrating business processes and technologies at the conceptual level. To validate our approach, we present a case study that describes the processes of the inventory management department of a public research center.     

Pattern-based e-service modelling for virtual service enterprises

Business services are customisable, interactive processes that providers have the potential to carry out together with clients that benefit from the effects. It is understood that business service transactions are best organised by means of virtual networks, where information technology allows for configuring multiple providers and processes on a per-request basis. Existing conceptual models for virtual service enterprises (VSEs) propose business service virtualisation for flexible and agile regulation and control of coordination between multiple providers and clients. In this paper, we present an approach for realising business service virtualisation based on software service technology. In particular, we propose a service-oriented software architecture for representing virtual business service processes as e-services. E-service models specify flexible business service interactions between multiple providers and clients of virtual service enterprises and allow for regulation and enforcement of their coordination. We demonstrate the utilisation of our e-service SOA in the context of an e-science scenario, where we show how to design e-service models for the use case of virtual polymorph prediction laboratories.     

A fuzzy logic approach to experience‐based reasoning

Experience‐based reasoning (EBR) is a reasoning paradigm that has been used in almost every human activity such as business, military missions, and teaching activities since early human history. However, EBR has not been seriously studied from either a logical or mathematical viewpoint, although case‐based reasoning (CBR) researchers have paid attention to EBR to some extent. This article will attempt to fill this gap by providing a unified fuzzy logic‐based treatment of EBR. More specifically, this article first reviews the logical approach to EBR, in which eight different rules of inference for EBR are discussed. Then the article proposes fuzzy logic‐based models to these eight different rules of inference that constitute the fundamentals for all EBR paradigms from a fuzzy logic viewpoint, and therefore will form a theoretical foundation for EBR. The proposed approach will facilitate research and development of EBR, fuzzy systems, intelligent systems, knowledge management, and experience management. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Int Syst 22: 867–889, 2007.