基于Agent的ESCCS体系结构研究

高技术战争要求装备保障指挥控制系统具有足够的柔性。通过构建基于Agent的装备保障指挥控制系统的体系结构，描述了装备保障指挥控制工作流的动态执行过程，表明了工作流技术与Agent技术结合能够有效地提高系统的柔性。     

ESCCS的柔性协调关系研究

装备保障任务之间，装备保障任务与资源之间存在复杂的协调关系。装备保障指挥控制系统的关键问题之一是柔性协调问题。为了解决这一问题，在对装备保障工作流协调函数和任务约束进行分析的基础上，形式化描述了系统的主要协调关系。这些协调关系符合装备保障工作流的实际情况，可以满足装备保障指挥控制系统解决复杂的协调问题的要求。     

一种提高系统柔性的工作流模型

工作流技术是实现过程集成的有效途径之一，其研究和应用日益受到重视。工作流模型是工作流技术的重要组成部分，本文介绍了一种基于活动网络的柔性工作流模型，从模型的角度描述了组成工作流的基本元素类型及图形表示，讨论了此工作流模型的形式定义，并给出了一个工作流模型的例子。     

基于任务和角色的工作流访问控制模型

提出一种基于角色和任务的工作流访问控制模型,并描述模型中用户、角色、许可、活动等要素间的指派关系和该模型的静态、动态约束规则,然后以此模型为上下文背景提出一个描述基于角色和任务的工作流授权约束的直观的形式化语言,称为ERCL。它以系统函数、集合一级变量符作为基本元素。最后给出一个该模型在实际工作流系统中的应用。     

接力式协作的工作流控制模型

针对工作流管理系统的描述、构造和实现问题，讨论了工作流的建模原则，分析了工作流要素间的关系，提出了一个描述工作流控制过程和组织结构的模型——接力式协作的工作流控制模型RCW，给出了实现工作流管理系统的理论框架．     

基于子任务和动作的工作流管理系统模型

通过分析大量的工作流运行实例,从实际应用的角度将工作流过程定义元模型中的活动（Activity）进一步分解为子任务和动作,提出了基于子任务和动作的工作流管理系统模型——STAWorkflow。给出了该工作流管理系统模型的体系结构、形式化描述以及运行实例。初步实践证明采用该模型的工作流管理系统更容易扩展和维护,能较好地满足用户的需求。     

一种扩展的工作流过程定义模型

提出了一个支持复杂应用的扩展工作流过程定义模型ScopePModel，它可以描述复杂结构的工作流流程，并且能够清晰地描述任务之间的控制流依赖关系和任务的补偿信息，表达出复杂工作流程的定义；同时，本文所提出的工作流过程定义模型ScopePModel，不仅可以捕捉现实世界业务流程，具有丰富的表达能力，使工作流定义的语义更为明确，而且为工作流过程定义模型验证提供了强大、丰富的理论依据，为工作流过程定义模型验证奠定了良好基础．ScopeWork是我们自行研制开发的工作流管理系统的原型系统，它基于该模型实现了复杂业务过程的工作流过程定义以及调度等功能．     

面向任务控制的柔性工作流模型的研究

针对柔性工作流在任务处理过程中动态实时进行安全管理提出一种面向任务控制的柔性工作流模型,该模型从任务的角度建立安全控制,动态地控制主体访问资源的权限,同时也实现了柔性工作流动态进行路由选择,实现了访问控制流与柔性工作流的同步,具有较好的灵活性。     

工作流任务分派的现状及其发展

工作流任务分派策略是工作流管理系统的关键技术之一,本文从学术研究和当前市场上工作流产品两个方面对工作流任务分派进行了比较研究,认为当前工作流任务分派描述存在不足,提出了工作流任务分派策略应该基于组织模型和流程模型的导航,并采用业务规则技术来描述.它是提高任务分派策略表达能力、增强柔性和易用性的有效方法.     

基于Petri网的工作流模型

Petri网是一种很有效的模型描述语言，不仅能描述系统的结构特性，同时还能描述其动态特性，尤其适用于描述含有并行成分的系统，而工作流技术作为实现企业过程集成的有效手段，广泛用于各种场合。在简要介绍了Petri网和工作流基本知识的基础上，指出了基于Petri网的工作流模型的优点，讨论了将工作流模型转化为Petri网模型的基本原则，并且提出了一种扩展的Petri网模型作为一种工作流建模的工具，最后对基于Petri网的工作流模型进行了总结。     

Improving process flexibility through products assignment with bill of material constraints

This paper investigates the effect of operational decisions on improving process flexibility of a flexible manufacturing system, which consists of multiple machine lines. The manufacturing system produces different types of products, whose structures are described by their bills of material (BOMs). When BOM constraints of products are considered, we observe that process flexibility of the flexible manufacturing system depends not only on the structure of each machine line, but also on the assignment decisions of products to machine lines. On the basis of the analysis of a measure for process flexibility with BOM constraints, we develop products assignment models to improve process flexibility of a flexible manufacturing system, which minimize the total demand shortfall of products in the system through assigning products to machine lines. Computational experiments verify the effectiveness of the proposed models on improving process flexibility of a manufacturing system, and sensitivity analyses show performance robustness of our methods.     

Modeling functional requirements for configurable content- and context-aware dynamic service selection in business process models

In this article, we propose a meta-model for formal specification of functional requirements for configurable content- and context-aware dynamic service selection in business process models with the objective to enable greater flexibility of the modeled processes. The dynamic service selection can cope with highly dynamic business environments that today's business processes must handle. Modeling functional requirements for dynamic service selection in business process models is not well covered in literature. Some partial solutions exist but none of them allows modeling a complete set of functional requirements for the selection similar to the one we are addressing in this article. Our meta-model enables formal specification of service selection relevant data extracted from service request message, custom configuration data (e.g., thresholds), process and task definition/instance metadata, and service selection rules. The meta-model is configurable and content- and context-aware. Processes leveraging our meta-model can adapt to changing requirements without redesign of the process flow. Proposed meta-model allows users to additionally configure the models at run time (e.g., raising a threshold). Modeling can be divided into roles with different required competences. We implement our meta-model in BPMN 2.0 (Business Process Model and Notation) through specific extensions to the BPMN semantic and diagram elements. By measuring complexity of real-world sample process models we show that using our solution modelers can efficiently model business processes that need to address frequent changing demands. Compared to available alternatives, models using our solution have on average ～13% fewer activities, ～16% fewer control-flow elements and ～22% fewer control paths. By reading ～10% smaller models (by volume) model readers get more flexible process models that capture all functional requirements for the dynamic selection.     

TMS for multimodal information processing

Many working processes are complex and composed by heterogeneous atomic tasks, e.g. editing, assembling data from different sources (as databases or laboratory's devices) with texts, images or learning objects, or submitting them to software components to retrieve information, to render them, re-format, submit to computations, and other types of information processing. All these processes heavily require procedural knowledge which is tacit as owned by experts of the working activity; they are complex and are extremely difficult to be modeled and automatized without having a flexible, multimodular evolutionary system in place. Support to information from different modalities increases the performance of a computer system originally designed for a task with a unimodular nature. In this paper, we discuss the idea of task management system (TMS) as a component-based system which offers a virtual workbench to search, acquire, describe and assemble computational agents performing single autonomous tasks into working processes. We sustain that TMS is a cutting edge platform to develop software solutions for problems related to workflow automatization and design. The architecture we propose follows the conceptual track of the TMS to allow composition and arrangement of atomic modules into a complex system. A configuration of the workflow can be implemented and extended with a set of task/components, chunks of activities which are considered basic elements of the workflow. By interacting with the TMS in editing mode, the workflow designer selects the relevant chunks from system repositories, drags them into a working system area and assembles them into a working process. As the main actor of the system, the workflow designer is provided with an environment resembling an artisan’s workshop, to let her/him select the relevant chunks from system repositories, drags them into a working area and assembles them into a working TMS instance, which represents the working process. Global interaction modality of the TMS instance is moulded and specialized on the base of the specific modalities of the task/components which have been retrieved from the system repositories and each time negotiated. Complex activities could be formally described, implemented and applied with a consequent advantage for personnel re-organization toward more conceptual activities.     

How Flexibility Facilitates Innovation and Ways to Manage it in Organizations

Flexibility is the capacity to change and to adapt to a challenging environment. It can be either adaptive – when challenges are present in the environment – or spontaneous – a preference for change without any external pressure. Change and adaptation are also key elements of innovation. In this article, we examine how different types of flexibility can play a major part in the innovation process. First, we discuss how flexible cognition and a flexible personality can facilitate the generation of innovations. Second, we discuss how flexibility can be beneficial to the audience for innovations. Lastly, we use the previous discussion of the benefits of flexibility for innovation to illuminate and present some approaches to the improvement of flexibility – both of employees and of the audience – for innovation. These approaches come both from other researchers’ work and from our own original research on the best practices of innovation management in Europe.     

Agent-based gesture tracking

We describe an agent-based approach to the visual tracking of human hands and head that represents a very useful "middle ground" between the simple model-free tracking and the highly constrained model-based solutions. It combines the simplicity, speed, and flexibility of tracking without using explicit shape models with the ability to utilize domain knowledge and to apply various constraints characteristic of more elaborate model-based tracking approaches. One of the key contributions of our system, called AgenTrac, is that it unifies the power of data-fusion (cue integration) methodologies with a well-organized extended path-coherence-resolution approach designed to handle crossing trajectories of multiple objects. Both approaches are combined in an easily configurable framework. We are not aware of any path-coherence or data-fusion solution in the computer vision literature that equals the breadth, generality, and flexibility of our approach. The AgenTrac system is not limited to tracking only human motion; in fact, one of its main strengths is that it can be easily reconfigured to track many types of objects in video sequences. The multiagent paradigm simplifies the application of basic domain-specific constraints and makes the entire system flexible. The knowledge necessary for effective tracking can be easily encoded in agent hierarchies and agent interactions.     

A PRACTICAL FUZZY DIGRAPH MODEL FOR MODELING MANUFACTURING FLEXIBILITY

There are many approaches in the literature to model and quantify manufacturing flexibility. Most of these models were developed to quantify several aspects of manufacturing flexibility like machine flexibility, routing flexibility, mix flexibility, volume flexibility, etc. This is mainly due to the fact that developing a generic model, which can be used to measure different types of flexibilities, is not straightforward. Recently, a generic flexibility measure, which is based on digraphs and permanent index, was proposed by the author. The main difficulty with that model like in all other flexibility models is the inability to collect precise data for computing the flexibility. In order to overcome this difficulty, a practical fuzzy linguistic approach is incorporated into the previous digraph model in this article. The extended fuzzy digraph model is explained in detail through an example in the present article.     

Ordering for bandwidth reduction

The bandwidth reduction of the stiffness and flexibility matrices of structures is achieved by ordering the elements of cocycle (nodal) and generalized cycle bases of the corresponding graph models, respectively. For nodal numbering, a two-step approach is used. In the first step the node-set of the graph model is decomposed into ordered subsets, and in the second step ordering within each ordered subset is performed. Six different algorithms are developed and implemented for rinding a suitable starting node for this ordering. The application of the proposed method for nodal ordering is extended to ordering the elements of generalized cycle bases for reducing the bandwidth of the corresponding flexibility matrices, and nodal numbering of finite element models for reducing the bandwidth of their stiffness matrices.