The increased demand from citizens for efficient service delivery from public sector organizations has implications for the information that underpins those services. Robust and effective information management is required. Information is looked upon as a resource that can give organizations a competitive edge if it is well leveraged. To address the need for more services and for more efficient service delivery, the Swedish government has promoted e-government initiatives and the two municipalities that are the subjects of this research have responded by engaging in e-service development and provision. e-Government has at its core the use of information and communication technology (ICT).  The municipalities have embarked on the analysis and automation of their business processes and hence the use of information systems.  Web-based technologies have created a two-way communication flow which has generated complex information for the municipalities to address. This development calls for stronger information and records management regimes. Enterprise Content Management is a new information management construct proposed to help organizations to deal with all their information resources. It promotes enterprise-wide information management. There is, however, little knowledge and understanding of ECM in the Swedish public sector. Further, how e-government developments have affected the management of information is an issue that has not been explored. Traditionally Swedish public authorities have employed records management to address the challenges of managing information. Records management has been used for the effective and systematic capture of records and the maintenance of their reliability and authenticity. While information helps with the daily running of business activities, records carry the evidentiary value of the interactions between the citizens and the municipalities. This research critically examines the interface between Enterprise Content Management (ECM) and records management as information/records management approaches. This has meant examining what the similarities and the differences between the two approaches are.  The research instrumentally used the lens of the Records Continuum Model (RCM), which promotes the management of the entire records’ continuum, a proactive approach, combines the management of archives and records and supports the pluralisation of the captured records. The research further highlights the information management challenges that the municipalities are facing as they engage in e-government developments.    Keywords: Enterprise Content Management, Records Management, E-government, Long-term Preservation, Business Process Management, Enterprise Architecture. / Centre for Digital Information Management

In 1993, Michael Hammer and James Champy advanced the Business Process Reengineering theory, which had promoted the enterprises overall achievement, therefore, raises the Enterprise managers to think carefully of the Business Process Reengineering and the Business Process Management (BPM) software. The BPM provides a consolidated end-to-end perspective of all the processes within the enterprise, and to resolve the problem of the Enterprise Resource Planning system. The Business Architecture Management (BAM) software is to map out the business structure of the enterprise, and make the business process integrated with the business structure closely, the purpose is to build business structure and business process in one unity. This model will support the enterprise managers to see, analyze and control the information technology and system integrations. Via the BAM model, we realize that the Business Architecture contains more views than Business Process. Therefore, the advantage of the BAM software is to have the business structure integrated with business process. In contrast, the disadvantage of the BPM software is to separate the business structure from the business process. The study is based on the scientific logic principle and to create a model of the BAM software. Using the Backus-Naur Form grammar and the graphical language, we define the BAM software model, and list three steps: the first step is to construct structure elements and operations which from the business structure. The second step is to derive the business process from the business structure. The third step is to integrate the business structure with and the business process. An example of Securities Transaction Platform software is developed via the BAM model. In this study, we also compare the BPM with BAM. We conclude that the BAM software will assist the enterprise managers to analyze and control the information technology and system integrations easily. Beside the above conclusion, this study also provides many useful references and suggestions to aid entrepreneurs and system managers to create BAM software.

Šiame bakalauro baigiamajame darbe nagrinėjami sandėliavimo procesai, siekiant išspręsti pagrindinę problemą – kaip sumažinti šių procesų metu iškylančias klaidas. Šio darbo tikslas yra surasti sandėliavimo procesų neefektyvumo priežastis ir pateikti pasiūlymus kaip patobulinti sandėliavimo procesus. Darbas remiasi viena didžiausių Lietuvoje siuvimo įmone - AB „Kauno Baltija“. Darbą sudaro trys pagrindinės dalys. Pirmoje šio darbo dalyje, situacijos analizėje, buvo išanalizuotos siuvimo pramonės rinkos tendencijos ir sėkmę lemiantys veiksniai, bei identifikuotos įmonės silpnosios ir stipriosios pusės. Taip pat apžvelgti teoriniai procesų valdymo aspektai, kurie parodė, jog procesų valdymas stipriai įtakoja bendrą organizacijos veiklą ir gali būti reikšminga priemonė, kad įgyti konkurencinį pranašumą kokybės, kaštų bei reagavimo atžvilgiu. Antrojoje darbo dalyje aprašytas atliktas kokybinis AB „Kauno Baltija“ sandėliavimo procesų empirinis tyrimas. Tyrimui atlikti buvo pasirinktas kokybinis tyrimo metodas, kadangi šis metodas labiausiai tinkamas siekiant detaliai išanalizuoti procesą jo natūralioje aplinkoje. Empirinio tyrimo duomenims surinkti buvo naudojamos kelios priemonės – stebėjimas, įmonės dokumentų analizė, neformalūs interviu su darbuotojais, mokslinės ir nemokslinės literatūros šaltinių analizė. Tyrimo rezultatai atskleidė, kad pagrindinės problemos, lemiančios visų sandėlio procesų neefektyvumą atsiranda dėl prastos sandėliavimo sistemos bei prastos duomenų... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / Warehouse processes are analyzed in this bachelor thesis in order to solve the main problem – how to reduce the quantity of faults that arise during the warehouse process. The purpose of this study is to research the reasons of warehousing process inefficiency and to find the solutions for improving warehouse management. The study is based on manufacturing company JSC “Kauno Baltija” which is one of the largest garment exporters in Lithuania. This study is divided into three main parts. Firstly, the sewing market tendencies and key-success factors were analyzed as well as the weaknesses and strengths of the company identified. First part of this study also summarizes the main theoretical arguments, which show that process management has big influence on overall organizational performance and may be the powerful tool for gaining the competitive advantage through low costs, flexibility and quality. The second part of this bachelor thesis consists of empirical research of AB “Kauno Baltija” warehouse process. Qualitative method of empirical research was chosen, because this is the best way to analyze process in its natural environment. In order to gain data of empirical research several tools were used – observation, the analysis of company documents, informal interview with workers, analysis of nonfiction and unscientific literature. The qualitative empirical research of AB “Kauno Baltija” warehouse processes showed that the basic problems causing inefficiency of all... [to full text]

Virtual Organizations (VO)—a network of independent organizations collaborating to address specific business opportunities—have become popular in today’s technology driven business environment. Due to their autonomous and interdependent nature, management of collaboration among such organizations is a challenging task. Although many solutions have been proposed over the past two decades to support inter-organizational interactions, VOs still face several challenges due to their dynamic and temporal nature that cannot be addressed by traditional solutions such as ebXML, RosettaNet and EDI. In this research, we present a framework for process management in service oriented virtual organizations and a distributed architecture for a flexible infrastructure that supports collaborative business process execution, monitoring and management. The framework contains 6 layers with multiple components within each layer. In designing the components of the framework, standard reference architecture such as the Open-EDI reference model and the S3 service oriented architecture, as well as best practices such as ITIL V3 and PMBOK are used. The infrastructure supports the common topologies of inter-organizational collaboration (e.g. peer-to-peer, star, linear), and responds well to changes due to its loosely coupled components. The proposed infrastructure is based on federating multiple SOA infrastructures with the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) as its core. It is implemented using IBM WebSphere ™ products. We demonstrate that VOs built with our framework and implementation architecture facilitate flexibility, rapid process integration and dynamic evolution.

In dieser Arbeit wird ein Ansatz zur automatischen Berechnung und Ausführung von strukturellen Anpassungsmöglichkeiten für Workflows auf Basis von Kontextinformationen entwickelt. Zur Sicherstellung der semantischen Korrektheit der Anpassungsmöglichkeiten werden zwei Arten von Einschränkungen berücksichtigt: Zustandsbezogene Einschränkungen (ZBE) und Aktivitätsabhängigkeiten (AA). ZBEs spezifizieren Einschränkungen zwischen Anpassungsoperationen und dem Ausführungszustand des Workflows. AAs beschreiben temporale Beziehungen zwischen Aktivitäten eines Workflows.

The new age, the "Information Age" (Davenport and Prusak 1997) has increased society's and businesses' reliance on Information Technology (IT). Hence, there is an increasing focus on the management of IT, not only from a technological perspective but also from a business perspective. This research, sponsored by REALTECH and the Australian Research Council, applies one of the modern management approaches, business process management (Hammer 1990), to the domain IT service provision, by designing a business process reference model for IT Service Provision. A reference model is an abstracted depiction of reality that serves as a standardised or suggestive conceptual basis for the design of enterprise specific models, usually within a like domain. They are one method of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of enterprise modelling and can also be used to standardise communication or capture knowledge. There is a general lack of theory regarding the classification, design and quality of reference models. The first part of this thesis attempts to fill these gaps, by presenting a reference model classification scheme, outlining 7 philosophies for the design of reference models and detailing 2 case studies on the user-perceived quality of business process reference models. Reference models and the Business Process Management Lifecycle (Rosemann 2000) are integrated to show how reference models can be applied to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of business process improvement projects. This reference model theory was then applied to produce a model for domain of IT Service Provision. Investment in IT has increased to become the largest single element of capital expenditure (Thorp 1998). Gartner predicted that organisations will spend over 10% of revenue on IT by 2005 (Haines 2000). A major input for this model is the ITIL best practice documents (CCTA 2000). The reference model focuses on Incident Management and used focus groups with participants from several large IT service providers to validate the models. The designed reference model is then tested in two case studies to determine its accuracy and usefulness. The thesis finishes with a discussion of the designed model, the effectiveness of the procedural model and provides suggestions for the design of other reference models. The final chapter provides a summary and an outlook for further research into the area.

A adoção da metodologia BPM (Business Process Management) tem como objetivo trazer resultados significativos para uma organização através do levantamento, priorização, reorganização e melhoria de desempenho dos processos de negócio. O consequente ganho de eficiência geralmente pode ser verificado no incremento de receita ou na redução do custo operacional de uma organização. Entretanto, existem alguns fatores que precisam ser observados de forma a evitar um problema generalizado, através da resistência à mudança, falta de comprometimento e desinteresse geral de todos os colaboradores envolvidos. Por isso, esta pesquisa buscou identificar os fatores críticos de uma implementação da metodologia BPM nos principais processos de negócio de uma instituição financeira cooperativa no Brasil. Para tanto, foi realizado um estudo de casos múltiplos considerando três projetos (cada um como sendo um caso completo) de modernização de processos e de sistemas de informação utilizando a metodologia BPM, analisados junto de três públicos alvo: gestores das unidades de negócio, gestores das áreas de tecnologia da informação e colaboradores das áreas usuárias de cada projeto. Os fatores críticos unânimes encontrados para os três projetos e para os três públicos são: escopo claro e definido, participação dos usuários, capacitação dos envolvidos e alinhamento estratégico entre TI e negócios. A principal contribuição acadêmica desta pesquisa consiste na convergência de fatores críticos de outras tecnologias previamente identificados na literatura e também uma classificação dos fatores encontrados nas seguintes dimensões: organização, tecnologia BPM, metodologia BPM e projeto. A contribuição para a empresa estudada está no conhecimento dos principais fatores que poderão transformar novos projetos em projetos de sucesso. / The adoption of the methodology BPM (Business Process Management) aims to bring significant results for an organization by collecting, prioritizing, reorganizing and improving the performance of business processes. The consequent efficiency gains can usually be found in increasing revenue or reducing the operating cost of an organization. However, there are certain factors that need to be observed to avoid structural collapse, through resistance to change, lack of commitment and general disinterest of all employees involved. Therefore, this study sought to identify the critical factors of an implementation methodology of BPM in the main processes of a cooperative financial institution business in Brazil. Thus, a multiple case study considering three projects (each as a full case) modernization of processes and information systems using BPM methodology, analyzed from three target groups was conducted: managers of business units, managers the areas of information technology and users of the user areas of each project. The unanimous critical factors found for the three projects and the three public are clear and defined scope, user participation, training of those involved and strategic alignment between IT and business. As the main academic contribution of this research have the convergence of critical factors other technologies previously identified in the literature and also a classification of factors found in the following dimensions: organization, technology BPM, BPM methodology and design. The contribution for the studied company is in the knowledge of the principal factors that could turn new projects in successful projects.

A Notação e Modelo de Processo de Negócio (BPMN - Business Process Model and Notation) possibilita apresentar informações sobre o fluxo de dados de um processo por meio de dados e artefatos, tais como objetos, associações e repositórios de dados. No entanto, esses elementos apresentam poder de expressão limitado, principalmente quando se referem ao mapeamento das fontes de dados (ex.: serviço web) em um modelo de processo. Neste contexto, o presente trabalho propõe uma abordagem para associar fontes de dados a elementos de BPMN (ex.: tarefa de serviço). Tal abordagem deve servir como um ponto de partida para profissionais de gerenciamento de processos de negócio quanto ao mapeamento, na etapa de modelagem, da fonte de dados que está sendo utilizada pelo processo, através da utilização de elementos de BPMN. Visando demonstrar os resultados, foram evidenciadas cinco correlações, que são chamadas de “propostas de definições”, seguidas por sua descrição textual e um exemplo de uso. Essas propostas de definições, juntamente com as fontes de dados utilizadas, foram avaliadas por meio de uma pesquisa de opinião. Como resultado, destaca-se que as fontes de dados selecionadas foram validadas pelos participantes da pesquisa de opinião, que demonstraram conhecimento em ao menos uma das fontes de dados, fornecendo indícios que as fontes de dados selecionadas são as mais apropriadas para o trabalho em questão. Ainda, como resultados, as propostas de definições foram validadas com os participantes, obtendo resultados positivos quanto aos fragmentos de processo elaborados para representar as fontes de dados internos, transferência de arquivos e base de dados compartilhada. A principal contribuição deste trabalho é auxiliar na identificação de fontes de dados de um processo de negócio, a partir do conjunto de elementos disponibilizado pela BPMN 2.0.2, onde, anteriormente, tal identificação era possível apenas através da documentação do processo. / Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) makes it possible to display information about the data flow of a process through data and artifacts such as objects, associations and data stores. However, these elements provide a limited capacity, especially when referring to the mapping of the data sources (e.g. web service) in a process model. In this context, this paper proposes an approach to associate data sources to BPMN elements (e.g. service task). Such approach aims to serve as a starting point to business process management professionals in order to map, in design time, the data source that is being used by the process, through the use of BPMN elements. In order to demonstrate the results, five correlations were evidenced, which are called “definitions proposals”, followed by their textual description and an example of use. These definitions proposals, together with the data sources used, were evaluated through a survey. As a result, the selected data sources were validated by the participants of the survey that demonstrated knowledge in at least one of the data sources, providing evidence that the selected data sources are the most appropriated for the work concerned. Also, as results, the definitions proposals were validated with the participants, obtaining positive results regarding to the process fragments designed to represent the data sources internal data, file transfer and shared database. The main contribution of this thesis is to assist the identification of data sources of a business process, from the set of elements provided by BPMN 2.0.2, where, previously, such identification was only possible through the process documentation.

A gestão de empresas públicas e privadas é foco de diversos estudos nos diversos centros acadêmicos. No caso da gestão pública, a lógica do negócio é diferente e necessita de estudos específicos que atendam a suas características peculiares. Mesmo com certas peculiaridades, as empresas públicas também necessitam de uma estratégia bem definida, processos estruturados e indicadores que mostrem aos gestores informações sobre o desempenho da organização. Desenvolvido por Müller (2003), o MEIO (Modelo de Estratégia, Indicadores e Operações) procurou criar e fortalecer a integração entre o Planejamento Estratégico, Avaliação de Desempenho e Gestão por Processos em empresas de natureza privada. Essa integração se mostra importante no que tange alinhar todos os processos da organização à estratégia e também acompanhar a evolução desses processos para o alcance das metas que levarão ao atendimento dos objetivos estratégicos. O objetivo deste trabalho é contribuir com uma discussão sobre a necessidade de gestão integrada em empresas públicas, tendo como base o MEIO, através de uma pesquisa-ação. A análise da aplicação de um modelo similar ao MEIO, mesmo que parcialmente, na empresa objeto de estudo mostra resultados quantitativos e qualitativos, os quais são analisados e discutidos. / Many academic studies focus on the management of private and public companies. However, there are a lot of differences in business logic between the private and public sector. Because business logics of public companies contain many peculiarities, they demand special attention and specific studies. The management process of public organizations needs to present a well defined strategy, structured business processes and performance indicators, providing the managers with the required information about the organization’s performance. The MEIO (Strategy, Measures and Operations Model) model, developed by Müller (2003), aims to create and solidify the integration between Strategic Planning, Performance Measurement Evaluation and Business-Process Management in private companies. This integration is very important, since it aligns the business processes with the organization strategy, and also evaluates the evolution of the processes concerned with the fulfillment of strategic objective goals. This dissertation discusses the necessity of having integrated management in public companies. The discussion is based on the MEIO model, using a research-action method. The study analysis was based on the quantitative and qualitative results of a partial application of a model similar to the MEIO on a public company.

O estabelecimento de Circuitos Virtuais (CVs) é uma solução bastante utilizada para garantir requisitos de qualidade de serviço para aplicações que trafegam na rede (e.g., transmissão de altas taxas de dados com baixa latência). Anteriormente, esses CVs eram estabelecidos manualmente a partir da troca de mensagens (via email e telefone) entre administradores de redes. O processo de troca de mensagens terminava com a configuração dos dispositivos e poderia durar semanas para ser concluído. Atualmente, middlewares de rede têm sido utilizados para automatizar o processo fim-a-fim do estabelecimento dos CVs. Esses middlewares utilizam regras pré-definidas, chamadas de políticas, para automatizar todo o processo. Apesar dessas soluções atuais terem diminuído o tempo de estabelecimento de CVs para minutos, elas retiraram o humano do processo de autorização e gerenciamento dos recursos de redes. Essa ausência do humano passa a ser um problema em casos que políticas pré-definidas não conseguem gerenciar CVs, principalmente em casos de CVs que perpassam diversos domínios, chamados de inter-domínios. Então, esta dissertação provê uma solução que possibilita a re-inclusão do humano no processo de autorização através de uma abordagem que também seja capaz de manter o gerenciamento realizado através de políticas. Essa abordagem é chamada de gerenciamento de processos de negócios (Business Process Management - BPM). Resultados obtidos a partir de experimentos realizados no backbone da Rede Nacional de Ensino e Pesquisa Brasileira (RNP) demonstraram que a solução proposta com BPM consegue disponibilizar o gerenciamento de CVs através de humanos e políticas. Adicionalmente, o protótipo desenvolvido para a obtenção dos resultados foi melhor do que as soluções atuais existentes em relação ao tempo de estabelecimento e a flexibilidade de gerenciamento dos CVs. / Establishing Virtual Circuits (VCs) is a widely used solution for ensuring quality of service requirements for applications that are carried over the network (e.g., transmissions that demand high data rates and low latency). Previously, these VCs used to be manually set via messages exchanged among network administrators, using email or telephone. This message exchanged process resulted in the configuration of the devices that could take weeks to complete. Currently, network middlewares have been used to automate the process of end-to-end establishment of CVs. These middlewares use pre-defined rules, called policies, to automate the entire process. Despite these current solutions have decreased the time for establishing VCs to the order of minutes, they removed the human process of authorization and management of network resources. This absence of the human interaction becomes a problem in cases where pre-defined policies can not manage VCs, especially when VCs cross multiple domains (inter-domain). This dissertation provides a solution which enables the human re-inclusion in the establishment process using an approach that is also capable of keeping the management policies. This approach is called Business Process Management (BPM). Results obtained from experiments on the backbone of the National Network of Brazilian Education and Research (RNP) demonstrated that the proposed solution can provide management of VCs considering both human interaction and management polices. Additionally, the prototype developed for obtaining the results performed better than current solutions in terms of the time used for establishment and management flexibility of VCs.