一个基于软件Agent的工艺工作流系统

先进制造模式对工艺设计提出了过程管理的要求,基于工作流技术和软件Agent技术,设计了一个能有效实现过程管理的计算机辅助工艺设计系统,通过对工艺流程的分析,建立了形式化的工艺工作流模型,在此基础上,定义了包括过程、意向、技能、熟人等模型的实现工作流运行的软件Aent模型,构造了可嵌套的Agent联邦结构,增强了系统的灵活性,上述关键技术在自主开发的商品化软件GS-CAPP中得以实现。     

项目管理系统中管理流程的研究与设计

工作流技术是计算机支持的协同工作研究领域新出现的一门学科。它是实现企业业务过程建模,过程管理与集成,最终实现业务过程自动化的核心技术。针对建立固定资产投资项目库的实际需求,项目开发小组利用编程技术实现了系统对项目的增、删、改等操作,并计划创建工作流流程管理,实现项目的流程化管理,最大程度地提高了办公效率。这不仅解决了传统管理方式所带来的问题,而且满足了投资处管理项目的需求。文章从工作流定义、研究现状和研究内容、项目库系统架枸及建模工具的角度概述与分析,使读者对工作流技术有一个系统的认识与了解。文章描述了在整个项目库中工作流技术的应用。本论文的目的在于使读者便于理解工作流的概念,并对工作流的应用有一定的了解。     

一种按需加载的工作流接口模型

当前的工作流系统普遍缺乏柔性,造成其动态适应性和实用性差。从分析工作流的应用程序与管理系统之间的数据耦合出发,通过将工厂模式与反演技术的结合,提出一种能实现组件按需加载的工作流接口模型。该模型可以显著地降低软件系统间的耦合,提高工作流系统的适应性,为工作流管理系统的组织模型与应用程序的集成提供了灵活的接口。     

工作流管理系统的柔性技术研究与应用

工作流的柔性是指灵活、动态地处理变更和异常的能力,这种能力使得工作流管理系统能够满足企业业务流程不断变更的需求,以及适应市场和企业的发展。自20世纪90年代中期开始,在提高工作流管理系统的柔性方面进行了很多探索和研究,引起了极大关注。该文首先介绍柔性工作流的相关概念及方法,然后结合工作流可扩展模型和跳转返回机制来增强工作流的柔性,最后基于微软WWF（Windows Workflow Foundation）的开发平台,通过示例来演示由宿主动态更新业务流程。     

柔性工作流路径变更研究与应用

工作流的柔性问题已成为工作流系统适应业务需求不断变化的重要问题。工作流系统的应用分为建模阶段和运行阶段。现有工作流系统的静态路径已无法适应当前企业业务过程路径多变的需求,本文通过研究相关的理论方法与技术方案,分析运行阶段的路径变更问题,来提高工作流的柔性特性。本文对现有工作流路径回退算法进行改进,使其支持并行多步回退,解决工作流系统的动态路径问题,此外,还对当前大量应用的审批会签功能进行分析,提出一种运行中动态增加并行分支的解决方案,进一步提升工作流的路径柔性。最后结合实例进行验证,测试结果表明,系统能够根据业务需求变化及运行环境的变化对其自身路径进行动态调整,大幅提升工作流系统的柔性特性。     

支持工作流动态变化的过程元模型

支持动态可变并具备灵活性是人们在实际应用中对工作流管理系统提出的新要求,已有的相关研究工作都集中在对工作流中发生变化的某个具体问题上.提出了支持动态特性的工作流过程元模型,可以为动态过程模型的设计提供指导.从时间和工作流组成的过程级别两个角度分析了其动态特性的表现,扩展了工作流管理联盟的工作流元模型.扩展后的过程元模型在工作流的建立阶段力求将动态特性进行描述和定义,在工作流执行阶段可以根据已定义的动态属性,处理过程的变化情况.基于该元模型,工作流管理系统既具有灵活性,又有利于变化控制操作.     

工作流在工程项目施工管理中的应用研究

在信息技术飞速发展的今天,工作流技术在管理中的应用越来越重要。它起源于办公自动化,后来广泛地应用于图像处理、文档管理、群件系统等领域,现已成为建设ERP、CRM、物流管理、项目管理等企业信息系统的核心技术。主要介绍基于EOS开发平台的可视化工作流,并以工程项目施工管理中工障事故处理工作流程为实例来阐述工作流在工程项目施工管理中的应用。详细说明工作流在工程项目施工管理中的应用过程,展现了EOS对事务处理的灵活性和方便性。     

分布式工作流系统的可扩展性和柔性研究

工作流管理系统为企业中不同部门之间的协作以及不同应用之间的集成提供了 一个功能强大的计算环境．在当前工作流技术的研究领域中,分布式工作流系统逐渐成为研 究的热点,而系统的可扩展性和柔性是分布式工作流系统成功实施的两个重要因素．本文介 绍了相关的领域概念、系统结构、过程实例的执行以及全局控制机制,提出了一种基于企业 功能领域划分的、具有高度可扩展性和柔性的分布式工作流系统的设计和实施方案．     

基于信牌驱动模式的工作流柔性建模的研究

目前大多数工作流系统都不能支持动态可变的柔性特征,而支持动态可变的柔性工作流系统是人们在实际应用中对工作流系统提出的新要求,也是企业为了满足业务流程变更的需要.提高工作流系统的柔性需要从工作流的建模、系统设计等各方面去努力.在协同信牌驱动工作流模式模型的基础上引进了适合该模式的柔性建模的元模型,并且提出了限制该模型的一些规则来讨论基于该模型的柔性建模工作流系统的实现.     

Building a production planning process with an approach based on CIMOSA and workflow management systems

Nowadays, one of the major challenges for enterprises is to stay competitive in today's changing market environment. This can be supported by business process models which on one hand are consistent and adequate (requirement #1), and on the other hand can be enacted and operated in an easy, fast, straightforward and integrated way (requirement #2). The CIMOSA architecture provides the basis for business process modelling to fulfil both of the above requirements. It supports the creation of consistent process models and allows to identify almost all the information required for the development of a workflow model. These models can be implemented using one of the commercial workflow management systems. In this paper we present the methodology based on the CIMOSA architecture that we have developed to build a workflow model in ©Lotus Notes for the forecasting and production planning processes in a tiles manufacturing enterprise. The CIMOSA approach has also been used to design the necessary software applications for processing the information of the resulting workflow system.     

Inheritance of workflows: an approach to tackling problems related to change

Inheritance is one of the key issues of object-orientation. The inheritance mechanism allows for the definition of a subclass which inherits the features of a specific superclass. When adapting a workflow process definition to specific needs (ad-hoc change) or changing the structure of the workflow process as a result of reengineering efforts (evolutionary change), inheritance concepts are useful to check whether the new workflow process inherits some desirable properties of the old workflow process. Today's workflow management systems have problems dealing with both ad-hoc changes and evolutionary changes. As a result, a workflow management system is not used to support dynamically changing workflow processes or the workflow processes are supported in a rigid manner, i.e., changes are not allowed or handled outside of the workflow management system. In this paper, we propose inheritance-preserving transformation rules for workflow processes and show that these rules can be used to avoid problems such as the “dynamic-change bug.” The dynamic-change bug refers to errors introduced by migrating a case (i.e., a process instance) from an old process definition to a new one. A transfer from an old process to a new process can lead to duplication of work, skipping of tasks, deadlocks, and livelocks. Restricting change to the inheritance-preserving transformation rules guarantees transfers without any of these problems. Moreover, the transformation rules can also be used to extract aggregate management information in case more than one version of a workflow process cannot be avoided.     

Model-as-you-go: An Approach for an Advanced Infrastructure for Scientific Workflows

Most of the existing scientific workflow systems rely on proprietary concepts and workflow languages. We are convinced that the conventional workflow technology that is established in business scenarios for years is also beneficial for scientists and scientific applications. We are therefore working on a scientific workflow system based on business workflow concepts and technologies. The system offers advanced flexibility features to scientists in order to support them in creating workflows in an explorative manner and to increase robustness of scientific applications. We named the approach Model-as-you-go because it enables users to model and execute workflows in an iterative process that eventually results in a complete scientific workflow. In this paper, we present main ingredients of Model-as-you-go, show how existing workflow concepts have to be extended in order to cover the requirements of scientists, discuss the application of the concepts to BPEL, and introduce the current prototype of the system.     

基于Web服务面向虚拟企业的柔性工作流管理技术研究

虚拟企业中盟员和其提供的服务是动态变化的．文中提出将工作流过程模型描述的活动规范中包含一个或多个Web服务请求，通过引入Web服务和Web服务请求的定义和约束，在活动实例的执行过程中实现Web服务请求与最佳Web服务提供企业动态的服务绑定和调用，由于虚拟企业内部的变化不会影响到各盟员业务过程的正常运行，因此具有较高的柔性和自适应性．     

Workflow mining: discovering process models from event logs

Contemporary workflow management systems are driven by explicit process models, i.e., a completely specified workflow design is required in order to enact a given workflow process. Creating a workflow design is a complicated time-consuming process and, typically, there are discrepancies between the actual workflow processes and the processes as perceived by the management. Therefore, we have developed techniques for discovering workflow models. The starting point for such techniques is a so-called "workflow log" containing information about the workflow process as it is actually being executed. We present a new algorithm to extract a process model from such a log and represent it in terms of a Petri net. However, we also demonstrate that it is not possible to discover arbitrary workflow processes. We explore a class of workflow processes that can be discovered. We show that the /spl alpha/-algorithm can successfully mine any workflow represented by a so-called SWF-net.     

分布式柔性工作流的研究与实现

工作流的柔性问题已经成为工作流研究领域的一个重要方面。笔者首先讨论了实现柔性的必要性，具体分析了柔性的分类。在此基础上给出了应用面向对象的概念和RMI技术来实现这一课题的详细方案。原形系统是基于C/S架构和RMI、采用Java语言开发的。系统中各客户独立地运行在各自的系统机上，通过分布式工作流引擎灵活的调度、控制、柔性协同地完成共同的目标。     

基于工作流的粮食筒仓储运信息系统设计与实现

工作流技术是企业提高业务过程效率和生产效率的有效技术。文章研究了将工作流技术应用于MIS系统,设计实现了工作流支持的粮食筒仓储运信息系统,实践证明工作流与数据库技术相结合,能提高系统工作的灵活性、反应敏捷能力和功能的可扩展性,提高了粮库企业的工作效率,并对同类系统的开发具有参考价值。     

CA-PLAN,a service-oriented workflow

Workflow management systems (WfMSs) are accepted worldwide due to their ability to model and control business processes. Previously, we defined an intra-organizational workflow specification model, Process LANguage (PLAN). PLAN, with associated tools, allowed a user to describe a graph specification for processes, artifacts, and participants in an organization. PLAN has been successfully implemented in Agentflow to support workflow (Agentflow) applications. PLAN, and most current WfMSs are designed to adopt a centralized architecture so that they can be applied to a single organization. However, in such a structure, participants in Agentflow applications in different organizations cannot serve each other with workflows. In this paper, a service-oriented cooperative workflow model, Cooperative Agentflow Process LANguage (CA-PLAN) is presented. CA-PLAN proposes a workflow component model to model inter-organizational processes. In CA-PLAN, an inter-organizational process is partitioned into several intra-organizational processes. Each workflow system inside an organization is modeled as an Integrated Workflow Component (IWC). Each IWC contains a process service interface, specifying process services provided by an organization, in conjunction with a remote process interface specifying what remote processes are used to refer to remote process services provided by other organizations, and intra-organizational processes. An IWC is a workflow node and participant. An inter-organizational process is made up of connections among these process services and remote processes with respect to different IWCs. In this paper, the related service techniques and supporting tools provided in Agentflow systems are presented.     

On verification of nested workflows with extra constraints: From theory to practice

Workflows are used to formally describe processes of various types such as business and manufacturing processes. One of the critical tasks of workflow management is automated discovery of possible flaws in the workflow – workflow verification. In this paper, we formalize the problem of workflow verification as the problem of verifying that there exists a feasible process for each task in the workflow. This problem is tractable for nested workflows that are the workflows with a hierarchical structure similar to hierarchical task networks in planning. However, we show that if extra synchronization, precedence, or causal constraints are added to the nested structure, the workflow verification problem becomes NP-complete. We present a workflow verification algorithm for nested workflows with extra constraints that is based on constraint satisfaction techniques and exploits an incremental temporal reasoning algorithm. We then experimentally demonstrate efficiency of the proposed techniques on randomly generated workflows with various structures and sizes. The paper is concluded by notes on exploiting the presented techniques in the application FlowOpt for modeling, optimizing, visualizing, and analyzing production workflows.     

反演计算技术及其在动态工作流管理中的应用

反演计算技术自诞生以来，对若干信息技术领域分支的发展带来了深远的影响，在增强灵活性方面展示出巨大潜力．对工作流技术来说，灵活性问题正是应该具备而却没有得到很好解决的问题．首先介绍反演计算的基本概念以及面向对象反演计算的模型，然后介绍反演计算目前的一些典型应用．最后，结合作者目前的工作，给出反演计算在动态工作流中的应用模型，并设计实现了原型系统．经过初步验证，该模型和原型系统能够对工作流的灵活性问题提供良好的支持．