The joint impact of service-oriented architectures and business process management on business process quality: an empirical evaluation and comparison

What is the interplay between business process management (BPM) and service-oriented architecture (SOA) in achieving high business process quality? In this paper, we empirically investigate the impact of both SOA and BPM on business process quality in terms of straight-through processing, business-to-business integration, quality control, as well as standardization and consolidation of business processes. For the empirical evaluation of our model, we use the data of 157 German service firms. The results show that the SOA paradigm has still received rather low adoption rates in the industry. However, SOA, BPM, and related information technologies have a direct positive impact on business process quality and the analysis provides evidence for the complementarities of BPM and SOA since interaction effects between them have an additional significant impact on business process quality. Consequently, firms having adopted SOA can more effectively apply BPM.     

面向跨组织业务流程的服务组合策略

动态服务组合为跨组织业务流程的快速开发提供了重要技术支撑.传统的集中规划的组合方式不能很好适应开放环境所提要求.提出一种基于分布式层次任务网络的服务组合策略,分析了实现该策略的组件的结构和功能,并定义组件间的Web服务接口,给出该策略下跨组织流程的开发方式,并以应用实例说明该策略对开放组织之间业务流程开发的有效支持.     

Developing a decision model for business process outsourcing

Information technology (IT) outsourcing has been one of the critical issues in organization management. Business process outsourcing (BPO) is an advanced type of IT outsourcing, which will be the next big wave in information technology services. Nevertheless, since prior studies have only examined issues related to traditional IS outsourcing, there have been few researches that introduce and discuss the important factors that should be considered in the decision of BPO adoption. This paper identifies factors affecting the BPO decision and structures a decision model using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method.By proposing a quantitative decision model, this paper will not only assist management in making better decisions in outsourcing their business processes, but also help them to obtain the most benefits from BPO.     

On business process monitoring using cross-flow coordination

This paper presents an approach for monitoring the execution progress of business processes. The monitoring focuses on the exceptions that could arise during this execution and, hence, could make the processes fail if not handled properly and timely. The approach relies on three flows known as control, communication, and navigation. The control flow connects tasks together with respect to a certain business logic. The communication flow captures the messages exchanged between persons/machines when they perform tasks of processes. Finally, the navigation flow captures the interactions between specialized networks that offer solutions to exceptions. These networks are built upon relations between tasks, between persons, and between machines. The coordination of control, communication, and navigation flows focuses on both the actions that are taken and the messages that are exchanged when handling exceptions. A system demonstrating flow development and coordination is, also, presented in the paper.     

Architectures in context: on the evolution of business,application software,and ICT platform architectures

This paper distinguishes between the business domain, the application software domain, and the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) platform domain. It analyses historical developments in each of these three domains and shows that they experienced parallel development. The parallelism can be explained by mutual influence and alignment. Innovation in one domain may enable or drive developments in another. In order to be able to analyse alignment patterns, the notions of business architecture, application software architecture, and ICT platform architecture are introduced and defined. Interdependent historical developments sometimes demonstrate a radical change. Each can be described as a shift in “dominant design”, and we identify six such changes in the history of the modern enterprise. Professionals and scientific researchers working in Information and Management can benefit from these insights by assuming that radical changes in dominant designs will affect their field in the future according to the same pattern.     

一种考虑不确定性信息的专家综合评价方法

针对专家评估中的不确定信息，在证据推理的框架下讨论了对定性指标的专家综合评价方法，重点研究了专家主观评判意见中的不准确性问题，提出一种新的表示专家不确定意见的信任度模型，解决了在这种表示下的专家意见的综合，算例表明该方法评估结果比较客观，合理。     

冶金工艺流程评价决策系统的构建与实现

针对冶金生产加工流程复杂,生产单元融合性差,多金属伴生资源综合利用低等特点,基于改进的层次分析法,采用一套可以客观全面地综合分析计算冶金工艺流程相关领域因素的评价模型,按照系统科学性,合理性、动态性的原则,设计了包括经济指标、环境指标和资源指标的冶金工艺流程评价决策系统,并给出了系统模型和实现方案.评价了系统应用价值.     

面向业务流程访问控制策略及决策优化方法

在分析业务流程访问控制策略需求的基础上,对经典的XACML策略实施框架进行了扩展,提出一种能够根据业务流程执行状态管理策略的实施框架。通过在策略模式中引入元素和定义元素的语义,使其能够描述访问策略和委托策略,并支持任务级最小特权的实现。给出了两种策略决策优化方法,针对策略集中无效策略数量过多的问题,采用逐步裁减法减少策略元素比对的次数,针对策略集中委托策略数量过多且需要验证可信性的问题,采用信任关联法减少策略匹配的次数,有效地提高了策略决策的效率。     

Shared cache architectures for decision support systems

In this paper we evaluate two shared-cache architectures for small-scale multiprocessors. We vary shared cache sizes from 8MB to 1GB, under various block sizes, cache organizations and sizes, and strategies for IO transactions. We use 12 bus trace samples obtained during the execution of a 100GB TPC-H on an eight-way multiprocessor.

To deal with the cold-start misses at the beginning of each sample, we identify the sure misses which are known to be misses in the full trace. The difference between the total number of misses and the number of sure misses is the zone of uncertainty, which may be hits or misses in the full trace. It turns out that the zone of uncertainty is small enough in most cases that useful conclusions can be drawn.

Our conclusions are that a single-cluster configuration with a shared cache—even a very small one—can be very effective for TPC-H. We also show that the coherence traffic between shared caches in a multiple cluster system is very high in the context of TPC-H.     

An automated approach for merging business process fragments

In the field of business process management, adopting efficient building strategies can improve the quality of companies’ business processes. The reuse of existing business processes or even fragments of them is a practical approach to build complete business processes or coarser-grained process fragments. In the present paper, we deal with the merge of a set of business process fragments for the construction of new complete processes. Our merge mechanism relies on a particular path matrix, that we call gateway path matrix. We use gateway path matrices to represent business process fragments to systematically compose shared components with individual ones. Moreover, our approach ensures that the resulting business process fragments subsume the behavior of initial ones and allows for adding new execution scenarios while controlling undesirable ones. In fact, we detect newly generated behaviors, and alert process designers of undesirable ones through behavioral constraints. We provide extensive experimental results derived from an implementation of our approach applied on a well-known industrial library of business process fragments.     

非常规突发事件应急决策冲突消解协调方法

针对应急决策冲突性特点和难以形成高一致性决策方案的问题,分析了应急群体决策冲突产生的原因,构建了应急决策冲突消解协调框架,提出了应急决策群体冲突测度方法,以及应急决策冲突消解模型和方法,形成了非常规突发事件应急决策冲突消解协调机制,使应急群决策冲突逐渐收敛以获得冲突程度足够低的应急决策方案。最后通过算例分析验证了冲突消解协调方法和机制的有效性。     

An iterative coordination approach to decentralized decision problems

Splitting methods are examined for the iterative solution of the classical linear least-squares problem in Hilbert space. Conditions for convergence of the class of iterations studied generalize existing conditions in the literature. Throughout, the emphasis is on an organization-theoretic interpretation of the algorithm, thereby clarifying certain questions of decentralization of information and computation. Two examples are discussed in some detail: a matrix example and a standard optimal control problem. When such problems involve very large, sparse matrices the analogy with the "invertible case" is a most compelling argument for further investigation of applicability.     

面向跨组织业务流程的角色行为验证方法

为了更有效地保证跨组织业务流程模型的正确性和合理性,应用Pi演算提出了一种基于状态的角色行为的验证方法。基于Pi演算提出了跨组织业务协作中的角色模型,设计了角色描述表,以清晰、直观地描述角色的权利、职责和义务,进而应用Pi演算验证工具MWB(移动工作平台)的check和step命令提出了单角色验证方法,并在此基础上从业务对象状态和业务操作角度提出了多角色验证方法。实现了角色行为的验证,并为跨组织业务流程的可达性、一致性和死锁等分析奠定基础。     

业务流程的时延预测队列挖掘方法

过程挖掘是针对流程信息系统所记录下的日志进行分析,将业务流程真实过程还原的技术。目前已有的方法多是基于控制流与数据流的观点,针对任务运行状态的,无时延的业务过程进行挖掘。但在挖掘存在多任务的有时延的业务进程方面,目前的方法存在一定局限性。提出基于队列挖掘优化过程模型的方法,首先利用现有的基于过程挖掘的方法,挖掘业务流程的初始模型。再运用队列挖掘的观点对特定的顾客进行时延预测,挖掘出顾客的行为信息,以此对初始流程模型进行优化。最后通过实例验证了所提出的优化挖掘方法的有效性,优化后的流程模型不仅对事件日志有很好的重放效果,并且能够反应出多类别的,且存在时延的业务流程中任务的行为信息。     

Run-time prediction of business process indicators using evolutionary decision rules

Predictive monitoring of business processes is a challenging topic of process mining which is concerned with the prediction of process indicators of running process instances. The main value of predictive monitoring is to provide information in order to take proactive and corrective actions to improve process performance and mitigate risks in real time. In this paper, we present an approach for predictive monitoring based on the use of evolutionary algorithms. Our method provides a novel event window-based encoding and generates a set of decision rules for the run-time prediction of process indicators according to event log properties. These rules can be interpreted by users to extract further insight of the business processes while keeping a high level of accuracy. Furthermore, a full software stack consisting of a tool to support the training phase and a framework that enables the integration of run-time predictions with business process management systems, has been developed. Obtained results show the validity of our proposal for two large real-life datasets: BPI Challenge 2013 and IT Department of Andalusian Health Service (SAS).     

An effective decision method for semidefinite polynomials

The purpose of this paper is to present an effective method of deciding the semidefiniteness of multivariate polynomials with coefficients in a computable ordered field, which admits an effective method of finding an isolating set for every non-zero univariate polynomial. Based on this method, the decision of the semidefiniteness of a multivariate polynomial may be reduced to testing some resulted polynomials in fewer variables, of which the total degrees and the term numbers do not exceed those of the given polynomial. With the aid of the computer algebra system Maple, our method is used to solve several examples.     

A participative end-user method for multi-perspective business process elicitation and improvement

A business process can be characterized by multiple perspectives (intentional, organizational, operational, functional, interactional, informational, etc). Business process modeling must allow different stakeholders to analyze and represent process models according to these different perspectives. This representation is traditionally built using classical data acquisition methods together with a process representation language such as BPMN or UML. These techniques and specialized languages can easily become hard, complex and time consuming. In this paper, we propose ISEA, a participative end-user modeling approach that allows the stakeholders in a business process to collaborate together in a simple way to communicate and improve the business process elicitation in an accurate and understandable manner. Our approach covers the organizational perspective of business processes, exploits the information compiled during the elicitation of the organizational perspective and touches lightly an interactional perspective allowing users to create customized interface sketches to test the user interface navigability and the coherence within the processes. Thus, ISEA can be seen as a participative end-user modeling approach for business process elicitation and improvement.     

Similarity of business process models: Metrics and evaluation

It is common for large organizations to maintain repositories of business process models in order to document and to continuously improve their operations. Given such a repository, this paper deals with the problem of retrieving those models in the repository that most closely resemble a given process model or fragment thereof. Up to now, there is a notable research gap on comparing different approaches to this problem and on evaluating them in the same setting. Therefore, this paper presents three similarity metrics that can be used to answer queries on process repositories: (i) node matching similarity that compares the labels and attributes attached to process model elements; (ii) structural similarity that compares element labels as well as the topology of process models; and (iii) behavioral similarity that compares element labels as well as causal relations captured in the process model. These metrics are experimentally evaluated in terms of precision and recall. The results show that all three metrics yield comparable results, with structural similarity slightly outperforming the other two metrics. Also, all three metrics outperform text-based search engines when it comes to searching through a repository for similar business process models.     

业务流程中目标的可视化建模方法研究

从业务流程可视化建模的目的出发,对业务流程中的目标描述和表示方法进行研究,以使得业务人员能从直观的角度对业务流程中目标的执行有一个合理的设计。提出了一种利用目标树实现业务目标设计视图的建模方法,该目标视图将是进一步进行业务流程设计的基础。依据客户的需求目标树和业务规则,检索业务目标模板知识库,提取符合要求的目标模板,在业务人员的参与下生成目标视图,使用一致性算法对整个生成过程进行校验。