Showing papers on "Workflow technology published in 2001"

Workflow Management: Models, Methods, and Systems

Abstract: This book offers a comprehensive introduction to workflow management, the management of business processes with information technology. By defining, analyzing, and redesigning an organization's resources and operations, workflow management systems ensure that the right information reaches the right person or computer application at the right time. The book provides a basic overview of workflow terminology and organization, as well as detailed coverage of workflow modeling with Petri nets. Because Petri nets make definitions easier to understand for nonexperts, they facilitate communication between designers and users. The book includes a chapter of case studies, review exercises, and a glossary. A special Web site developed by the authors, www.workflowcourse.com, features animation, interactive examples, lecture materials, exercises and solutions, relevant links, and other valuable resources for the classroom.

Workflow Modeling: Tools for Process Improvement and Application Development

Abstract: From the Publisher: If you're looking to create new workflow systems or redesign existing business processes for your enterprise, look no further than this concise, new hands-on book. Providing proven techniques for identifying, modeling, and redesigning business processes, and explaining how to implement workflow improvement, this book helps you define requirements for systems development or systems acquisition. By showing you how to build visual models for illustrating workflow, the authors help you to assess your current business processes and see where process improvement and systems development can take place. This book brings the two distinct disciplines of management and information technology together especially for high-tech professionals who need to improve the way work gets done to maintain a competitive edge. Addressing such hot topics as enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications and enterprise application integration (EAI), you learn how to manage these complex, new schemes not as technology-based changes, but as the process redesign projects they truly are. Plus, understanding process workflow modeling allows you to get a better handle on implementing a complete business process for successful e-commerce initiatives. Filled with real-world examples and practical techniques, you get a seamless methodology for process redesign and information systems development that integrates use-case analysis and process workflow modeling to easily span the gap between management and IT. What's more, the visual modeling you learn from this book shows you not only how to improve your enterprise, but where trouble spots might occur and how to avoid common pitfalls. What'smore, because the book is structured as an on-the-job guide, you don't have to read it all before getting started. It features clear summaries, project checklists, and other aids that make it a logical guide to keep on your reference shelf and put to use every day.

Production workflow: concepts and techniques

Abstract: We may not be able to make you love reading, but production workflow concepts and techniques will lead you to love reading starting from now. Book is the window to open the new world. The world that you want is in the better stage and level. World will always guide you to even the prestige stage of the life. You know, this is some of how reading will give you the kindness. In this case, more books you read more knowledge you know, but it can mean also the bore is full.

The P2P Approach to Interorganizational Workflows

Abstract: This paper describes in an informal way the Public-To-Private (P2P) approach to interorganizational workflows, which is based on a notion of inheritance. The approach consists of three steps: (1) create a common understanding of the interorganizational workflow by specifying a shared public workflow, (2) partition the public workflow over the organizations involved, and (3) for each organization, create a private workflow which is a subclass of the respective part of the public workflow. Using an example, we explain that the P2P approach yields an interorganizational workflow which is guaranteed to realize the behavior specified in the public workflow.

Diagnosing workflow processes using Woflan

Abstract: Workflow management technology promises a flexible solution for business-process support facilitating the easy creation of new business processes and modification of existing processes. Unfortunately, today’s workflow products have no support for workflow verification. Errors made at design-time are not detected and result in very costly failures at run-time. This paper presents the verification tool Woflan. Woflan analyzes workflow process definitions downloaded from commercial workflow products using state-of-the-art Petri-net-based analysis techniques. This paper describes the functionality of Woflan emphasizing diagnostics to locate the source of a design error. Woflan is evaluated via two case studies, one involving 20 groups of students designing a complex workflow process and one involving an industrial workflow process designed by Staffware Benelux. The results are encouraging and show that Woflan guides the user in finding and correcting errors in the design of workflows. Received 27 September 2000; revised 8 March 2001

Workflow Automation: Overview and Research Issues

Abstract: Workflow management systems, a relatively recent technology, are designed to make work more efficient, integrate heterogeneous application systems, and support interorganizational processes in electronic commerce applications. In this paper, we introduce the field of workflow automation, the subject of this special issue of Information Systems Frontiers. In the first part of the paper, we provide basic definitions and frameworks to aid understanding of workflow management technologies. In the remainder of the paper, we discuss technical and management research opportunities in this field and discuss the other contributions to the special issue.

Pockets of Flexibility in Workflow Specification

Abstract: Workflow technology is currently being deployed in quite diverse domains. However, the element of change is present in some degree and form in almost all domains. A workflow implementation that does not support the process of change will not benefit the organization in the long run. Change can be manifested in different forms in workflow processes. In this paper, we first present a categorization of workflow change characteristics and divide workflow processes into dynamic, adaptive and flexible processes. We define flexibility as the ability of the workflow process to execute on the basis of a loosely, or partially specified model, where the full specification of the model is made at runtime, and may be unique to each instance. To provide a modeling framework that offers true flexibility, we need to consider the factors, which influence the paths of (unique) instances together with the process definition. We advocate an approach that aims at making the process of change part of the workflow process itself. We introduce the notion of an open instance that consists of a core process and several pockets of flexibility, and present a framework based on this notion, which makes use of special build activities that provide the functionality to integrate the process of defining a change, into the open workflow instance.

Access control mechanisms for inter-organizational workflow

Abstract: As more businesses engage in globalization, inter-organizational collaborative computing grows in importance. Since we cannot expect homogeneous computing environments in participating organizations, heterogeneity and Internet-based technology are prevalent in inter-organizational collaborative computing environments. One technology that provides solutions for data sharing and work coordination at the global level is inter-organizational workflow. In this paper, we investigate the access control requirements for inter-organizational workflow. We then present access control solutions for inter-organizational workflow based on our implementation. Many of the requirements and solutions in this paper address the scalability of existing security solutions, the separation of inter-organizational workflow security from concrete organization level security enforcement, and the enforcement of fine-grained access control for inter-organizational workflow.

Formal foundation and conceptual design of dynamic adaptations in a workflow management system

Abstract: While the different aspects of flexible workflow management are still under discussion, the ability to adapt the structure of running workflow instances to modified workflow schemas is an important property of a flexible workflow management system. In this paper, we present the formal foundation and conceptual design of dynamic adaptations in an object-oriented workflow management system. We describe in some detail how workflow schemas are represented. The system architecture, based on the CORBA object-oriented middleware, is overviewed, and the implementation of dynamic adaptations is sketched. An example introduces the graphical user interface of the system and shows a dynamic adaptation.

Method, system, and program for executing a workflow

Abstract: Provided is a method, system, and program for executing a workflow. A workflow class implement methods and objects to provide information on and control of workflows. A work list class implements methods and objects to provide information on and manipulate work items assigned to the workflows. A work item class implements methods and objects to provide information on and manipulate work items when executing one workflow.

Exterminating the Dynamic Change Bug: A Concrete Approach to Support Workflow Change

Abstract: Adaptability has become one of the major research topics in the area of workflow management. Today's workflow management systems have problems dealing with both ad-hoc changes and evolutionary changes. As a result, the workflow management system is not used to support dynamically changing workflow processes or the workflow process is supported in a rigid manner, i.e., changes are not allowed or handled outside of the workflow management system. In this paper, we focus on a notorious problem caused by workflow change: the “dynamic change bug” (Ellis et al.s Proceedings of the Conference on Organizational Computing Systems, Milpitas, California, ACM SIGOIS, ACM Press, New York, 1995, pp. 10–21). The dynamic change bug refers to errors introduced by migrating a case (i.e., a process instance) from the old process definition to the new one. A transfer from the old process to the new process can lead to duplication of work, skipping of tasks, deadlocks, and livelocks. This paper describes an approach for calculating a safe change region. If a case is in such a change region, the transfer is postponed.

Computer system for providing a collaborative workflow environment

Abstract: Currently lacking are effective and accurate tools to help petroleum traders and logistics personnel to make better decisions, collaborate in real-time and negotiate deals in a private and secure environment. The present invention addresses this and other needs in the industry. In particular, the present invention provides automated workflow management for a series of workflow tasks by mapping the workflow tasks to a collaborative workflow process comprising: roles, users, business processes and computer executable activities. A workflow object is received that supplies information used to set particular attributes of the roles, the users, the business activities and the computer executable activities of the collaborative workflow process. Information and data objects are shared electronically among the users performing certain of the roles. At least one of the activities is automatically executed, such that the workflow is automatically managed.

Object-based workflow system and method

Abstract: A workflow engine for rendering instant workflow decisions includes a workflow designer, a web site interface, a database, checklists created by the workflow designer and associated with at least one workflow process, and a messaging system for brokering messages. The workflow engine uses checklists to evaluate workflow processes. Each checklist is associated with one workflow decision. The workflow checklist is an object=based representation of the sequential ordering of functions within the workflow engine. Administrative tools allow an end-user to modify workflow checklists and their associated parameters without recompiling or rebooting the system.

Proclets: a framework for lightweight interacting workflow processes

Abstract: The focus of traditional workflow management systems is on control flow within one process definition. The process definition describes how a single case (i.e. workflow instance) in isolation is handled. For many applications this paradigm is inadequate. Interaction between cases to support communication and collaboration is at least as important. This paper introduces and advocates the use of interacting proclets, i.e. lightweight workflow processes. By promoting interactions to first-class citizens it is possible to model complex workflows in a more natural manner. In addition, the expressive power and flexibility are improved compared to the more traditional workflow modeling languages.

Beyond workflow management: product-driven case handling

Abstract: In the last decade, workflow technology has become one of the building blocks for realizing enterprise information systems. Unfortunately, the application of contemporary workflow management systems is limited to well-defined and well-controlled environments. In practice, workflow technology often fails because of limited flexibility. We advocate a paradigm shift to overcome this problem: Workflows should not be driven by pre-specified control-flows but by the products they generate. This paper presents the software package FLOWer which fully supports this paradigm shift.

Workflow integration system for enterprise wide electronic collaboration

Abstract: An enterprise wide electronic commerce system (Fig. 5) allows trading partners (134, 136, 138, Fig. 5) to act as participants in a complex trading process. Participants communicate with one another by joining conversations that are hosted in a collaboration space and managed by a collaboration hub (132, Fig. 5). In this manner, the enterprise workflow may have an effect on, or be affected by, local workflows. That is, they may share information and interact with one another.

Workflow system and method

Abstract: A network-enabled workflow system is used in conjunction with a rules-based search engine to provide an easy-to-use interface to build workflow processes that facilitate the support for electronic business applications as well as business-to-business relationships. The system allows workflow services to be rendered to external organizations such as partners, suppliers, distributors and customers. Workflow services are preferably represented by roles that can be used to represent workflow actors in the workflow routing rules. These roles are preferably evaluated at run-time to best match recipients (via the MORSE algorithm) depending on the organization context from which the routing request is made. Furthermore, the network-enabled workflow system provides for the analysis of workflow processes in real time.

System and method for visual representation of pages in a production printing workflow

Abstract: A system and method for managing production printing workflow is disclosed. The system includes workflow management software which manages and facilitates the procedural stages of the workflow including job origination, job preparation, job submission and job fulfillment. The workflow management software provides an integrated object oriented interface which visually reflects and interacts with the workflow. The software further provides functionality for efficient page level modifications to documents at the job preparation stage. This functionality allows such modifications to be easily made to selected pages and visually verified by displaying visual representations of the modifications on visual representations of the pages. In particular, the insertion and attributes of ordered media, such as tab separator pages, is visually represented. This allows an operator to visually verify ordered media ordering and placement and coordinate with the production output device to properly insert and efficiently utilize the ordered media.

Methods and systems for integrating process modeling and project planning

Abstract: Methods and system consistent with the present invention provide a workflow modeling and project planning integration tool that allows a user to model a business process or workflow, to create and activate a project plan based on the workflow, and to track the progress of the activated project plan. The tool also allows the workflow to be reused to create more than one project plan based on the workflow. Moreover, the tool simultaneously manages the execution of the plans. The integration tool may include a Web-based “Distributed Authoring and Versioning” (WebDAV) server that operates as a virtual file system for computers on a network to allow more than one user on different computer systems to view the same workflow or project plan, monitor the progress of an activated project plan, or simultaneously create and activate different plans from the same workflow.

System and method for application performance management

Abstract: An improved method and system for complex and integrated application performance management which tracks end-to-end computer resource consumption of a first business application workflow in an enterprise system. The first business application workflow may include a plurality of components. The plurality of components may further include one or more component types. A second or subsequent business application workflow may be embedded or linked as a component of the first business application workflow. Resource usage information of the plurality of components (including resource usage information of underlying units of work of the plurality of components) may be correlated to determine cumulative resource usage information for the first business application workflow. The resource usage information may be displayed in a graphical user interface. User input may be received indicating one or more of the following for the first business application workflow: an application name, a natural business unit, and a mission-critical ranking.

Methods and systems for improving a workflow based on data mined from plans created from the workflow

Abstract: Methods and systems consistent with the present invention provide an integrated process modeling and project planning tool that allows an enterprise affiliate to improve a workflow that models a process. To improve the workflow, the tool initiates execution of a plan created from the workflow such that an instance of the process is at least partially performed, receives a characteristic about the performance of the plan, and modifies the workflow to reflect the characteristic so that a subsequent plan created from the modified workflow has the received characteristic.

Process descriptions as organisational accounting devices: the dual use of workflow technologies

Abstract: Workflow technologies present a problem for CSCW. On the one hand, they are perhaps the most successful form of groupware technology in current use; but on the other, they have been subject to sustained and cogent critiques, particularly from perspective of the analysis of everyday working activities. This leads inevitably to the question: in the face of these critiques, just why and how do work-flow technologies prove effective? This paper suggests that part of the solution lies in the fact that workflow technologies play more than one role in organisations, and that, in fact, the success of work flow technologies may have little to do with the typical relationship of those technologies to the accomplishment of everyday work. On the basis of the notion of a dual role for workflow technologies, I lay out a framework for considering the design and analysis of workflow systems that may help to bridge between these two roles.

Template based workflow definition

Abstract: Technology is disclosed for defining workflows based on a template. The template defines a set of parameters for actions available to various workflow types. In one embodiment, the template is an XML document that is used to determine a set of options to provide a user via a graphical user interface. The user selects the options desired and the resulting workflow definition is stored for later use. Any entity with sufficient access privileges can start and/or participate in a workflow that operates according to the stored workflow definition.

System and method for implementing compound documents in a production printing workflow

Abstract: A system and method for managing production printing workflow (100) is disclosed. The system includes workflow management software which manages and facilitates the procedural stages of the workflow including job origination (102), job preparation (106), job submission (104) and job fulfillment (110). The workflow management software provides an integrated object oriented interface which visually reflects and interacts with the workflow. The software further provides functionality to create, manage and manipulate compound documents as ordered collections of documents.

A reference model for team-enabled workflow management systems

Abstract: 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).

Event-based scheduling method and system for workflow activities

Abstract: An event-based scheduling method and system for providing automatic activity synchronization and automatic data exchange between workflows and between workflows and other applications. An automatic synchronization mechanism is provided for enabling workflows to interact with other workflows or other applications to automatically synchronize activity execution. An automatic data exchange mechanism is provided for enabling workflows to exchange data with other workflows or other applications. An event processing pre-compilation architecture receives a workflow definition having at least one event node and responsive thereto generates a workflow definition without event nodes at compile time. Each event node is replaced with a translated workflow node that conforms to the syntax supported by the underlying workflow engine. The translated workflow node is also assigned to an application that can implement the desired event node semantics. An event processing run-time architecture invokes the application assigned to the translated node when the translated node is encountered. The application employs a publication and subscription tool for automatically performing activity synchronization and/or data exchange at run time.