In modern organisations business process modelling has become fundamental due to the increasing rate of organisational change. As a consequence, an organisation needs to continuously redesign its business processes on a regular basis. One major problem associated with the way business process modelling (BPM) is carried out today is the lack of explicit and systematic reuse of previously developed models. Enabling the reuse of previously modelled behaviour can have a beneficial impact on the quality and efficiency of the overall information systems development process and also improve the effectiveness of an organisation’s business processes. In related disciplines, like software engineering, patterns have emerged as a widely accepted architectural mechanism for reusing solutions. In business process modelling the use of patterns is quite limited apart from few sporadic attempts proposed by the literature. Thus, pattern-based BPM is not commonplace. Business process patterns should ideally be discovered from the empirical analysis of organisational processes. Empiricism is currently not the basis for the discovery of patterns for business process modelling and no systematic methodology for collecting and analysing process models of business organisations currently exists. The purpose of the presented research project is to develop a methodological framework for achieving reuse in BPM via the discovery and adoption of patterns. The framework is called Semantic Discovery and Reuse of Business Process Patterns (SDR). SDR provides a systematic method for identifying patterns among organisational data assets representing business behaviour. The framework adopts ontologies (i.e., formalised conceptual models of real-world domains) in order to facilitate such discovery. The research has also produced an ontology of business processes that provides the underlying semantic definitions of processes and their constituent parts. The use of ontologies to model business processes represents a novel approach and combines advances achieved by the Semantic Web and BPM communities. The methodological framework also relates to a new line of research in BPM on declarative business processes in which the models specify what should be done rather than how to ‘prescriptively’ do it. The research follows a design science method for designing and evaluating SDR. Evaluation is carried out using real world sources and reuse scenarios taken from both the financial and educational domains.

Effective management of information about client requirements in construction projects lifecycle can contribute to high construction productivity; within budget and schedule, and improve the quality of built facilities and service delivery. Traditionally, requirements management has been focused at the early stages of the construction lifecycle process where elicited client requirements information is used as the basis for design. Management of client requirements does not extend to the later phases. Client requirements often evolve and change dramatically over a facility's life. Changing client requirements is one of the principal factors that contribute to delays and budget overruns of construction projects. This results in claims, disputes and client dissatisfaction. The problems of current requirements management process also include: lack of integrated and collaborative working with requirements; lack of integrated requirements information flow between the various heterogeneous systems used in the lifecycle processes, and between the multiple stakeholders; inefficient and ineffective coordination of changes within the lifecycle processes; manual checking of dependencies between changing requirements to facilitate assessment of cost and time impact of changes. The aim of the research is to specify a better approach to requirements information management to help construction organisations reduce operational cost and time in product development and service delivery; whilst increasing performance and productivity, and realising high quality of built facilities. In order to achieve the aim and the formulated objectives, firstly, a detailed review of literature on related work was conducted. Secondly, the research designed, developed and conducted three case studies to investigate the state-of-the-art of managing client requirements information. A combination of multiple data collection methods was applied which included observations, interviews, focus group and questionnaires. Following this, the data was analysed and problems were identified; the necessity for a lifecycle approach to managing the requirements information emerged. (Continues...).

The Grid has been recognised as the next-generation distributed computing paradigm by seamlessly integrating heterogeneous resources across administrative domains as a single virtual system. There are an increasing number of scientific and business projects that employ Grid computing technologies for large-scale resource sharing and collaborations. Early adoptions of Grid computing technologies have custom middleware implemented to bridge gaps between heterogeneous computing backbones. These custom solutions form the basis to the emerging Open Grid Service Architecture (OGSA), which aims at addressing common concerns of Grid systems by defining a set of interoperable and reusable Grid services. One of common concerns as defined in OGSA is the Grid accounting service. The main objective of the Grid accounting service is to ensure resources to be shared within a Grid environment in an accountable manner by metering and logging accurate resource usage information. This thesis discusses the origins and fundamentals of Grid computing and accounting service in the context of OGSA profile. A prototype was developed and evaluated based on OGSA accounting-related standards enabling sharing accounting data in a multi-Grid environment, the World-wide Large Hadron Collider Grid (WLCG). Based on this prototype and lessons learned, a generic middleware solution was also implemented as a toolkit that eases migration of existing accounting system to be standard compatible.

IT Outsourcing (contracting-out of Information Technology services) has become a pivotal economic trend in recent decades. This study traces the interlacing of IT Outsourcing with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software systems. Little research has considered the reciprocal relations between these two phenomena. This was the gap in knowledge addressed by the research. More specifically, the research investigated: why organisations turn to IT Outsourcing providers to implement and maintain ERP systems and what are the success factors for selective IT Outsourcing within ERP projects in Israel. Field research was conducted in organisations during 2006-2008, employing IT Outsourcing for ERP systems in two stages: Stage One used qualitative data-collection tools: five semi-structured interviews and fifteen open-ended questionnaires. Inductive content and thematic analysis conducted on data from these tools produced themes that formed the basis for a closed-ended questionnaire used in the next stage. Stage Two employed seventy two closed-ended questionnaires. Quantitative data from this questionnaire underwent deductive statistical analysis to test and confirm findings from Stage One. Results indicated that significant differences between ERP package-based centralised cross-organisational systems and the out-dated self-developed legacy IT systems produced different organisational requirements for IT Outsourcing services. Respondents thought it essential to employ IT Outsourcing for ERP projects, noting different motivations for this strategy. Respondents identified four success factor groups for IT Outsourcing in ERP projects, grading the factors according to relative importance. Management commitment and support was the most important success factor group. The research showed that organisations that implement ERP systems regard it as essential to employ the IT Outsourcing services since they provide experienced updated experts. Organisations stress that they need these services to ensure effective, operable systems, understanding that initially there is little cost reduction. Management commitment, wise choice of vendors and intelligent contracting can establish successful vendor-organisation collaboration. Contribution to knowledge is made by offering a better understanding of the unique phenomenon of IT Outsourcing within ERP projects in Israel, motivations to use and success factors

La plupart des entreprises évoluent dans des marchés concurrentiels en adaptant rapidement leurs processus métiers. Leur performance dépend de leur capacité à utiliser des techniques d'amélioration continue de leur organisation par la mise au point de Systèmes Informatiques (SI) durables pour l'automatisation des processus. En ce sens, les architectures orientées services (Service Oriented Architectures) ont permis le développement de SI flexibles avec un style d'architecture prédominant de composition de services. Cependant, l'alignement de ces architectures aux impératifs de l'évolution des processus reste une préoccupation centrale. Dans cette thèse, nous étudions la cartographie et l'évolution des processus métiers depuis leur conception jusqu'à leur automatisation dans une architecture orientée services ainsi que son adaptation. Nous proposons une approche d'ingénierie dirigée par les modèles intégrée à un outil de modélisation de processus et de développement d'architectures orientées services. Celle-ci débute par la spécification d'un modèle BPMN (Business Process Modeling Notation) décrivant les interactions des processus métiers. Grâce à une chaîne de transformation automatisée, nous produisons un modèle SCA (Service Component Architecture) décrivant une solution de composition de services. Ceci garantit la traçabilité architecturale entre le niveau métier du SI et son niveau technique puisque les services générés décrivent une logique applicative qui met en oeuvre la logique métier du modèle BPMN. Ensuite, nous introduisons une méthode de propagation du changement de la logique métier vers la logique applicative qui est fondée sur la synchronisation incrémentale entre les modèles BPMN et SCA. Elle est intégrée à un outil d'analyse de l'impact du changement qui se base sur la réécriture de graphes pour éviter les inconsistances induites par les modifications. Enfin, elle permet de simuler l'impact des évolutions des processus, pour en estimer le coût selon les métriques que nous proposons, avant de procéder à la réingénierie de l'architecture orientée services pour assurer une meilleure gouvernance du changement / Most companies evolve in competitive markets by quickly adapting their business processes. Their performance depends on their capability to adopt continuous improvement techniques for their organization through the development of durable Information Systems (IS) for automating the processes. In this sense, Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) enable the development of flexible IS with a predominant architectural paradigm of service compositions. However, aligning the SOA to the business processes evolutions remains an overriding concern. In this thesis, we study business process management and evolution from their design until their automation in SOA and their adaptation. We propose a model-driven engineering approach which is integrated to a tool for business process modeling and SOA development. It begins with the design of a model with Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) describing process interactions. With an automated transformation chain, we produce a model with Service-Component Architecture (SCA) describing service compositions solution based on a SOA. This ensures the architectural traceability between the business level of the IS and its technical level, since generated services describe an application logic that implements the BPMN model. Then, we introduce an incremental change propagation method between business process and SOA founded on BPMN and SCA models synchronization. It is integrated to a change impact simulation and analysis tool that is based on graph rewriting technique to avoid the inconsistencies caused by change propagation. Finally, we propose metrics for measuring the impact of business process evolutions on SOA maintenance and ensuring better change governance

La minimisation des coûts et la maximisation de la satisfaction du client sont les facteurs majeurs dans le développement des activités d'une entreprise. Ceci pourrait être assuré par les bonnes pratiques de gestion et de prise de décision à travers un processus de planification hiérarchique bien déterminé: Stratégique, tactique et opérationnel. Dans la plupart des cas, les industries manufacturières ont tendance à planifier la production de façon à minimiser les coûts et remédier à la pénurie des produits. Ceci permet à l’entreprise d'avoir une vision stratégique permettant d'optimiser ses activités sur plusieurs plans (maintenance, approvisionnement, qualité...). Mais pour assurer une meilleure optimisation et assurer la continuité de l'entreprise, les managers doivent joindre la maintenance à la production et les considérer comme des systèmes interdépendants. Dans ce contexte, plusieurs travaux ont traité le cas de maintenance intégrée à la production et l'ont considéré comme outil d'optimisation afin de minimiser les coûts et assurer une certaine compétitivité. Des travaux ont aussi intégré la dégradation des machines pour planifier les actions de maintenance. Cependant, la production et la maintenance sont liées à diverses ressources physiques (ouvriers, machines etc..) que l'entreprise doit prendre en considération. Autrefois, les industries ont toujours tendance à se procurer toutes sortes de ressources physiques afin de satisfaire ses demandes. Ces ressources sont alors toujours disponibles, même si elles sont inutilisées pendant certaines périodes de production. Ayant conscience des pertes que peut causer ces ressources en cas de non utilisation, certaines entreprises choisissent de sous-traiter ou de louer quelques ressources pendant une période donné afin de satisfaire une demande bien déterminée. La particularité de notre travail consiste à trouver la quantité des ressources à louer afin de satisfaire la demande. En effet, en s'inspirant du modèle HMMS, qui étudie la planification de la production et des stocks en prenant en considération la variation de nombre de ressources humaines travaillant, on a eu l'idée de transformer le problème et de chercher alors le nombre optimal de machines à louer pendant chaque période. Ayant conscience aussi de l'importance de la planification de maintenance, celle-ci a été intégrée au plan de production afin de trouver la meilleure solution. Le nombre de machines à louer étant variable, on a considéré qu'il varie selon la demande des clients. Des stratégies de maintenance améliorées ainsi que de nouvelles contraintes ont été prises en considération lors la planification des plans de production et de maintenance du système étudié / Ameliorating the situation of an industry requires certainly reducing costs and maximizing the customer satisfaction. These two goals can't be achieved without a good management and a good knowledge of making decision tools. These decisions are generally associated, at least, with three levels of the hierarchical planning process: strategic, tactical and operational levels. Generally, manufacturing industries aims at determining the most adequate production planning which helps them to minimize costs and hedge against capacity shortages. Releasing such an efficient planning urges firms to have a global vision on their production process which may be looked upon as an inter-dependant set of sub systems performing various functions including ordering raw materials, assembling pieces, controlling quality, repairing machines, storage, etc. But, it is worth mentioning that to ensure the continuous productivity of a firm, managers have to focus especially on both production and maintenance sub-systems and consider them as strongly dependent systems. In this context, many researches were carried out in industrial field dealing with joint production and maintenance planning optimization as a solution to minimize costs and guard against important competitiveness. Such an optimization may be more efficient when considering the degradation of workstations over time while scheduling maintenance actions. Moreover, production and maintenance activities deal with diverse physical resources including mainly workforce and workstations. So, it is worth noting that, while making decisions and proposing planning, a special attention should be made on the manner of managing these resources which remain indispensable for the firm's sustainability. Previously, firms used to buy (and recruit) all physical resources required to fulfill orders. So, these resources are always available at the industry even if they are sometimes more and less needless and useless during some production periods. This may take place especially when the firm has to fulfill fluctuating demand causing consequently drastic costs. Aware about the superfluous costs of possessing, for a long period, resources which can be sometimes pointless, subcontracting and leasing have become very important for many manufacturing firms because of the advantage that these solutions can bring. So, nowadays, these industrial solutions are becoming more and more in vogue concerning mainly subcontracting workforce to perform some tasks (maintenance, supervision, audit,...) or leasing workstations in order to produce the required quantities. In the present work, we deal with a new concept, that no previous work has dealt with, consisting on leasing machines depending on the ordered quantities. In fact, inspired mainly from the HMMS model, carried out by a group of economists who studied the production, inventories and workforce planning considering variable number of human resources, we had the idea to transform the problem from a workforce planning problem to a workstations planning one. Also, aware about the drastic importance of managing the production and the maintenance planning simultaneously, we aim in the present work at suggesting a joint production and maintenance planning optimization under leasing constraint. Otherwise, in our work, dealing with many leased machines, we consider that the number of these used machines does not remain constant and may vary from a production period to another depending on a fluctuating demand over a finite time horizon. Moreover, in the present work we aim at performing a disturbance analysis and to study its contribution to the development of conjugated production and maintenance planning considering leasing constraint and taking into account used machines degradation. Improved maintenance strategy and related constraints are also studied in this work in order to obtain optimal production and maintenance schedules

To survive in an ever increasing global and competitive marketplace, organisations are forging strategic alliances to gain a competitive advantage over their rivals. Consequently, it is now recognised that it is not sufficient to look at organisations in isolation, but view them in the wider context of the supply chain. In order to design arid manage supply chains it is necessary to understand and predict the behaviour of such systems. The ability to perform detailed studies of dynamic behaviour has made discrete event simulation (DES) an invaluable tool in the design and analysis of manufacturing systems. DES has been used to model individual stages of a supply chain, but rarely has it been applied comprehensively across the entire chain. The multi-faceted nature of supply chains makes the creation of a single model that represents all aspects of the chain difficult. A compositional framework, termed HerMIS (Heterogeneous Model Integration and Simulation), is proposed that allows pieces of a supply chain to not only be studied in isolation, but in the context of the other parts as well. Three requirements are identified for the development of HerMIS. These are: (1) to support a compositional approach so as to allow multi-facetted modelling, (2) to function in a distributed environment where models and information about them are distributed at different locations amongst various organisations, and (3) to provide an execution mechanism that allows the composite model to be simulated efficiently. A class based taxonomy of component models and their interaction is conceived that forms the basis of a representation scheme for composite modelling. An agent based paradigm that employs a collection of synthesis_agents and model_agents is devised to support the distributed operation of the framework. The synthesis_agents function as sources of knowledge for synthesising composite models and are used in conjunction with an interactive blackboard based system to guide the user in creating composite models. Each of the model_agents incorporate a discrete event model of a supply chain component, arid supports the distributed simulation of the composite model. Finally, a parallel discrete event simulation algorithm is proposed that enables the composite model to be simulated on a network of computer workstations. The algorithm is based on the optimistic PDES approach and takes into consideration some of the operating characteristics of a composite supply chain model.

This research was motivated by the sudden increase of hypermedia information (such as that found on CD-ROMs and on the World Wide Web), which was not initially accessible to blind people, although offered significant advantages over traditional braille and audiotape information. Existing non-visual information systems for blind people had very different designs and functionality, but none of them provided what was required according to user requirements studies: an easy-to-use non-visual interface to hypermedia material with a range of input devices for blind students. Furthermore, there was no single suitable design and evaluation methodology which could be used for the development of non-visual information systems. The aims of this research were therefore: (1) to develop a generic, iterative design and evaluation methodology consisting of a number of techniques suitable for formative evaluation of non-visual interfaces; (2) to explore non-visual interaction possibilities for a multimodal hypermedia browser for blind students based on user requirements; and (3) to apply the evaluation methodology to non-visual information systems at different stages of their development. The methodology developed and recommended consists of a range of complementary design and evaluation techniques, and successfully allowed the systematic development of prototype non-visual interfaces for blind users by identifying usability problems and developing solutions. Three prototype interfaces are described: the design and evaluation of two versions of a hypermedia browser; and an evaluation of a digital talking book. Recommendations made from the evaluations for an effective non-visual interface include the provision of a consistent multimodal interface, non-speech sounds for information and feedback, a range of simple and consistent commands for reading, navigation, orientation and output control, and support features. This research will inform developers of similar systems for blind users, and in addition, the methodology and design ideas are considered sufficiently generic, but also sufficiently detailed, that the findings could be applied successfully to the development of non-visual interfaces of any type.

In 1995, few retailers considered the Internet important to the future of their businesses. By 2000 the prevailing wisdom suggests that it has become almost imperative to incorporate the Internet into a company's business activities. However, whilst some areas of the U.K. retail sector are successfully integrating the Internet into their businesses others remain unconnected. This work is a study of Internet adoption amongst UK retailers from 1995 to 2000. It explores the level of adoption in terms of the technical progression and extent of adoption, in terms of the range of features included in retail Web-sites. Additionally, the project explores the factors that are likely to influence the retailers' Internet adoption progress. A multi-method research strategy was used combining qualitative and quantitative methods: an on-line survey of retail Web activities followed by in-depth interviews and finally, a postal survey. The results of the on-line survey reveal that Internet adoption varies according to retailer size and product assortment. Some retailers' Web-sites include a range of informational, interactive or transactional features, while others have yet to be developed sufficiently to be available via the Web. The results of the Interviews and postal survey indicate that some retail organisations may be better positioned to take advantage of the Internet than others. Indeed, nine critical factors are found to have a significant influence upon the retailers' level of Internet adoption. In particular, operating in an appropriate market sector and having a positive view of the viability of the Internet, in-conjunction with the development of an appropriate Internet strategy, can strongly facilitate a retailer's adoption progress. From the, researcher's perspective, this study is important as it identifies many new variables and factors, and provides insights into how to devise a robust, multi-faceted methodology.

Les organisations participent à des collaborations pour faire face à un environnement en perpétuelle évolution (mondialisation, crise, etc.). Or, la nature instable de la collaboration et de son environnement peuvent compromettre la pertinence des processus définis pour atteindre les objectifs collectifs. Deux problématiques émergent alors de ce constat : comment détecter l'inadéquation des processus exécutés par rapport aux objectifs poursuivis à l'instant t ? Comment redéfinir la meilleure réponse possible à l'instant t, dans un laps de temps proche du temps réel (en fonction de la situation de collaboration, de l'avancée de l'exécution des processus, et l'état des acteurs et ressources). La problématique scientifique relève de l'apport d'agilité aux processus collaboratifs. Ces travaux de thèse ambitionnent de répondre à ces questions en proposant (i) une définition de l'agilité des processus collaboratifs, (ii) la mise en place d'une architecture orientée services dirigée par les événements (ED-SOA), afin de prendre en compte les événements émis par la collaboration et son environnement, (iii) un algorithme de mesure de distance entre le modèle de la situation collaborative telle qu'elle devrait être et le modèle de la situation telle qu'elle est réellement (détection), et enfin (iv) un algorithme de recommandation d'adaptation des processus collaboratifs. L'implémentation des mécanismes de l'agilité des processus collaboratifs a donné naissance à un prototype open-source. Les résultats de cette thèse s'inscrivent également au sein des projets ANR SocEDA et EUR FP7 PLAY qui proposent chacun une gestion des processus collaboratifs dans le contexte d'une plateforme dirigée par les événements. / It is known that organizations have to take part into collaborations to face un unstable world. But, the unstable nature of the collaboration and of its environment can threaten the accuracy of the processes. We can extract two main issues from this context : (i) How to detect the instant where the collaborative processes does not match with the current crisis situation and what are the causes; (ii) How to redefine the best possible response (i.e. at a concrete level, the best processes and their orchestration and choreography) at time t, in real time, depending of the collaborative situation, the processes execution progress, the state of the resources and collaboration's partners. The scientific problem is focused on the agility of collaborative processes. This thesis aspires to solve these issues by proposing (i) a definition for collaborative processes agility, (ii) the definition and the realization of an Event-Driven Architecture layer among the SOA architecture of the information system of the collaboration, in order to take in account the events emitted by the collaboration and its field to update the collaborative situation models. Then (iii) an algorithm to measure the distances between the model of the crisis situation at is it supposed to be when the processes are executed, and the model of the crisis situation as it really is, and (iv) a tool for decision support and a redesign of the crisis response processes and choreography. These results are in line with the ANR SocEDA project and the EUR FP7 PLAY project which aim at providing agility to collaborative processes, in an event-driven context. The mechanisms to ensure collaborative processes agility are implemented as an open-source prototype.