Mineração de processos é um novo campo de pesquisa que liga mineração de dados e gestão de processos de negócio. A mineração de processos segue a premissa de que existe um processo desconhecido em um determinado contexto, e que ao analisar os traços do seu comportamento, com o auxílio da mineração de dados, é possível descobrir o modelo do processo. No entanto, processos de negócio realistas são difíceis de minerar por causa do excesso de comportamento registrado nos logs. Esses processos não estruturados, apesar de complexos, possuem um potencial grande para melhoria, sendo que as abordagens atuais de mineração de processos para esse contexto ainda provém pouco suporte à gestão. Este trabalho de pesquisa de mestrado visou aplicar técnicas computacionais evolutivas na mineração de modelos de processo, usando algoritmos genéticos para descobrir automaticamente modelos de processos não estruturados visando dar suporte à gestão organizacional de processos. Uma revisão da literatura foi realizada para auxiliar a proposição de uma nova abordagem focada na descoberta de modelos de processos não estruturados. A abordagem proposta introduz novas fórmulas de cálculo das métricas de completude e precisão baseadas nas informações de transições entre atividades, reorganizadas por meio de uma estrutura de matriz criada neste trabalho. A abordagem introduz também o uso de operadores genéticos e estratégias de fluxo evolutivo ainda não implementados na literatura relativa a algoritmos genéticos na descoberta de processos. Análises da parametrização da abordagem proposta, bem como os modelos de processos resultantes, indicam que a abordagem é eficaz na mineração de modelos de processos melhores a partir de amostras de um log não estruturado / Process mining is a new field of research that links data mining and business process management. Process mining follows the premise that there is an unknown process in a given context, and by analyzing the traces of its behavior, with the help of data mining, the process model can be discovered. However, realistic business processes are difficult to mine because of excessive behavior recorded in the logs. These unstructured processes, despite being complex, hold great potential for improvement, and the current process mining approaches for that context yet provide little support for management. This masters research project aims to apply evolutionary computational techniques in process mining, using genetic algorithms to automatically discover unstructured process models in order to support process management in organizations. A literature review was carried out to support the proposition of a new approach focused on the discovery of unstructured process models. The proposed approach introduces new formulas for calculating completeness and precision metrics, based on the information of transitions between activities that are reorganized through a matrix structure created in this work. The approach also introduces the use of genetic operators and evolutionary flow strategies not yet implemented in the literature regarding genetic algorithms in process discovery. Analyzes of the parameterization of the proposed approach, as well as the resulting process models, indicate that the approach is effective in mining better process models from samples of a unstructured log

No cenário atual, nota-se a constante busca das organizações para que se mantenham competitivas no mercado. Para apoiar a organização, tanto no nível operacional quanto no nível não operacional, a Tecnologia da Informação (TI) é usada. Com intuito de apoiar as estratégias, as organizações usam a Gestão de Processos de Negócio (BPM Business Process Management) para identificar, definir e evoluir seus processos de negócio. Usando estes recursos, o framework Strategic Alignment with BPM (StrAli-BPM) foi desenvolvido para contribuir na melhoria do alinhamento entre os níveis estratégicos e operacionais da organização, por meio do tratamento dos requisitos não funcionais nos processos de negócio. Este projeto de pesquisa propõe estender o framework StrAli-BPM com a criação de um novo componente para fazer a extração de informações de metas estratégicas organizacionais a serem usadas na modelagem de requisitos não funcionais de processos de negócio. Para auxiliar na melhoria do alinhamento estratégico, a versão antiga do framework StrAli-BPM usa os Acordos em Nível de Negócio (BLA Business Level Agreement) para tratar os requisitos não funcionais. Além de tratar os requisitos não funcionais por meio de BLAs, a versão antiga do framework StrAli-BPM define que o BLA deve dar origem aos Acordos em Nível de Serviço (SLA Service Level Agreement), ou seja, os SLAs devem ser derivados dos BLAs. No entanto, esta versão antiga não define quais informações das metas estratégicas organizacionais devem ser usadas para compor BLAs. O novo componente proposto neste projeto de pesquisa, chamado Indicador Chave de Desempenho para Acordo em Nível de Negócio (KPI2BLA Key Performance Indicator to Business Level Agreements), se propõe a identificar quais informações relevantes das metas estratégicas organizacionais devem ser usadas na criação dos requisitos não funcionais, que, posteriormente, devem servir para criação de BLAs / In the present scenario, there is the constant search for organizations to remain competitive in the market. And to support the organization, both at the operational level and in the non-operational level, the Information Technology (IT) is used. In order to support the strategies organizations use the Business Process Management (BPM) to identify, define and evolve their business processes. Using these features, the framework Strategic Alignment with BPM (StrAli-BPM) is designed to contribute to improving the strategic alignment between the strategic and operational levels of the organization, through the treatment of non-functional requirements in the business process. This research project proposes to extend the StrAli-BPM framework with the creation of a new component to the extraction of organizational strategic goals information to be used in the modeling of non-functional requirements of business processes. To assist in improving the strategic alignment, the old version of StrAli-BPM framework uses the Agreements in Business Level (BLA) to treat the non-functional requirements. In addition to treating non-functional requirements through BLAs, the old version of StrAli-BPM framework defines the BLA should lead to agreements on service level (SLA), its mean, the SLAs should be derived from BLAs. However, this old version does not define what information the organizational strategic goals should be used to compose BLAs. The new component proposed in this research project, called Key Performance Indicator to Agreement on Business Level (KPI2BLA) aims to identify relevant information from organizational strategic goals should be used in the creation of requirements nonfunctional, which later must be used to create BLAs

Linha de Produto de Software (LP) é uma forma sistemática de promover a geração de produtos de software específicos baseados no reúso de uma infraestrutura bem definida. Conceitos de LP aplicados ao domínio de Gestão de Processos de Negócio (BPM - Business Process Management) já apresentaram resultados significativos, entretanto, o escopo de aplicação e os benefícios ainda são limitados. Essas limitações ocorrem, pois as abordagens de LP já existentes para BPM normalmente não cobrem todo o ciclo de vida de processos de negócio e não oferecem o devido tratamento aos aspectos dinâmicos que as organizações demandam para esse domínio. Linha de Produto de Software Dinâmica (LPD) é uma evolução das LPs tradicionais que tem proporcionado uma forma eficiente para lidar com adaptações de produtos em tempo de execução. LPDs podem ser aplicadas, por exemplo, no contexto de arquiteturas SOA (Service-oriented Architecture), que por sua vez podem ser usadas como base tecnológica para viabilizar BPM nas organizações. Dentro desse contexto, este trabalho propõe uma abordagem de LPD para atender as necessidades de organizações interessadas em realizar processos de negócio, por meio de um alinhamento entre conceitos de BPM e SOA. A abordagem proposta aqui, denominada Dynamic Product Line for Business Process Management (DynPL4BPM), visa ser abrangente o suficiente para cobrir todo o ciclo de vida de BPM, sendo previsto o tratamento de aspectos dinâmicos que o domínio de BPM requer. Uma avaliação sistemática e comparativa demonstrou que a abordagem proposta é bem sucedida em apresentar processos bem mais abrangentes que outras soluções similares já propostas na literatura para o mesmo fim. / Software Product Line (PL) is a systematic way to promote the generation of specific software products based on the reuse of a well-defined infrastructure. Concepts of PL applied to Business Process Management (BPM) have already presented significant results; however, the application scope and benefits are still limited. These limitations occur because the existing approaches of LP for BPM usually do not cover the entire lifecycle of business processes and do not provide proper treatment to the dynamic aspects that organizations demand for this domain. Dynamic Software Product Line (DPL) is an evolution of traditional PLs that has provided an efficient way to deal with adaptations of products at runtime. DPLs can be applied, for example, in the SOA (Service-oriented Architecture) context, which in turn can be used as technological basis to enable BPM within organizations. Within this context, this dissertation proposes a DPL approach to meet the needs of organizations interested in carrying out business processes by means of an alignment between BPM and SOA concepts. The approach proposed here, called Dynamic Product Line for Business Process Management (DynPL4BPM), aims to be comprehensive enough to cover the entire BPM lifecycle, including the treatment of dynamic aspects that the BPM domain requires. A systematic and comparative assessment showed that the proposed approach is successful in presenting processes much more comprehensive than other similar solutions already proposed in the literature for the same purpose.

Mineração de processos é uma área de pesquisa relativamente recente que se situa entre mineração de dados e aprendizado de máquina, de um lado, e modelagem e análise de processos de negócio, de outro lado. Mineração de processos visa descobrir, monitorar e aprimorar processos de negócio reais por meio da extração de conhecimento a partir de logs de eventos disponíveis em sistemas de informação orientados a processos. O principal objetivo deste trabalho foi avaliar o contexto de aplicação de técnicas provenientes das áreas de inteligência computacional e de aprendizado de máquina, incluindo redes neurais artificiais. Para fins de simplificação, denominadas no restante deste texto apenas como ``redes neurais\'\'. e máquinas de vetores de suporte, no contexto de mineração de processos. Considerando que essas técnicas são, atualmente, as mais aplicadas em tarefas de mineração de dados, seria esperado que elas também estivessem sendo majoritariamente aplicadas em mineração de processos, o que não tinha sido demonstrado na literatura recente e foi confirmado por este trabalho. Buscou-se compreender o amplo cenário envolvido na área de mineração de processos, incluindo as principais caraterísticas que têm sido encontradas ao longo dos últimos dez anos em termos de: tipos de mineração de processos, tarefas de mineração de dados usadas, e técnicas usadas para resolver tais tarefas. O principal enfoque do trabalho foi identificar se as técnicas de inteligência computacional e de aprendizado de máquina realmente não estavam sendo amplamente usadas em mineração de processos, ao mesmo tempo que se buscou identificar os principais motivos para esse fenômeno. Isso foi realizado por meio de um estudo geral da área, que seguiu rigor científico e sistemático, seguido pela validação das lições aprendidas por meio de um exemplo de aplicação. Este estudo considera vários enfoques para delimitar a área: por um lado, as abordagens, técnicas, tarefas de mineração e ferramentas comumente mais usadas; e, por outro lado, veículos de publicação, universidades e pesquisadores interessados no desenvolvimento da área. Os resultados apresentam que 81% das publicações atuais seguem as abordagens tradicionais em mineração de dados. O tipo de mineração de processos com mais estudo é Descoberta 71% dos estudos primários. Os resultados deste trabalho são valiosos para profissionais e pesquisadores envolvidos no tema, e representam um grande aporte para a área / Mining process is a relatively new research area that lies between data mining and machine learning, on one hand, and business process modeling and analysis, on the other hand. Mining process aims at discovering, monitoring and improving business processes by extracting real knowledge from event logs available in process-oriented information systems. The main objective of this master\'s project was to assess the application of computational intelligence and machine learning techniques, including, for example, neural networks and support vector machines, in process mining. Since these techniques are currently widely applied in data mining tasks, it would be expected that they were also widely applied to the process mining context, which has been not evidenced in recent literature and confirmed by this work. We sought to understand the broad scenario involved in the process mining area, including the main features that have been found over the last ten years in terms of: types of process mining, data mining tasks used, and techniques applied to solving such tasks. The main focus of the study was to identify whether the computational intelligence and machine learning techniques were indeed not being widely used in process mining whereas we sought to identify the main reasons for this phenomenon. This was accomplished through a general study area, which followed scientific and systematic rigor, followed by validation of the lessons learned through an application example. This study considers various approaches to delimit the area: on the one hand, approaches, techniques, mining tasks and more commonly used tools; and, on the other hand, the publication vehicles, universities and researchers interested in the development area. The results show that 81% of current publications follow traditional approaches to data mining. The type of mining processes more study is Discovery 71% of the primary studies. These results are valuable for practitioners and researchers involved in the issue, and represent a major contribution to the area

Submitted by Silvana Teresinha Dornelles Studzinski (sstudzinski) on 2016-10-06T16:29:28Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Maurício de Oliveira Saraiva_.pdf: 6467007 bytes, checksum: 7a0d95202fd7af8fa777e0b1cb5f6fb0 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-10-06T16:29:28Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Maurício de Oliveira Saraiva_.pdf: 6467007 bytes, checksum: 7a0d95202fd7af8fa777e0b1cb5f6fb0 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-07-28 / UNICO - Universidade Corporativa dos Correios / A evolução da tecnologia tem permitido um suporte cada vez melhor à disciplina de gerenciamento de processos de negócio (BPM). A automação de práticas, a partir de ferramentas de modelagem, possibilita construir modelos visando apoiar as organizações no desenho e gerenciamento de seus processos. Em BPM, a transformação e melhoria contínua de processos são fundamentais para o gerenciamento da organização e os modelos de processos de negócio devem acompanhar essa evolução. Para realizar a composição desses modelos, seja pela transformação de um ou mais processos ou pela fusão de organizações, analistas usam as técnicas disponíveis na literatura. Porém, frequentemente elas são consideradas imprecisas ao não assegurar a correta integração dos modelos. Consequentemente, compor modelos de processos de negócio se torna uma tarefa difícil, custosa e propensa a erros, uma vez que as técnicas existentes criam modelos compostos difíceis de entendimento baseados em grafos e notação genérica que não correspondem à realidade do mercado de trabalho. Portanto, este trabalho propõe uma técnica de composição de modelos de processos de negócio que reúne, em uma única fonte, o conjunto das técnicas mais utilizadas na literatura, bem como dá suporte à composição de modelos direcionada para uma notação largamente conhecida e utilizada pelas organizações. Além disso, propõe a implementação de uma ferramenta, baseada nessa técnica, que foi criada para definir a similaridade e apoiar a integração de modelos de forma semiautomática. Por fim, estudos experimentais foram realizados com analistas que resolveram seis cenários de composição de modelos, tanto de forma manual como com o apoio dessa ferramenta, cujo resultado mostrou que a técnica proposta, de fato, melhora a precisão e reduz o esforço de composição, proporcionando redução de custos e aumento de produtividade. / The evolution of technology has allowed an increasingly better support to the discipline of business process management (BPM). The automation of practices from modeling tools, allows building models to support organizations in the design and management of its processes. In BPM, the transformation and continuous improvement of methods are fundamental to the management of the organization and models of business processes should follow this evolution. To perform the merge of these models, by the transformation of one or more processes, or by merging of organizations, software analysts use the techniques available in the literature. However, frequently they are considered imprecise, by not ensuring the correct integration of models. Consequently, merging business processes models becomes a difficult, error prone task, since existing techniques create composite models difficult to understand based on graphs and generic notation that does not match to the industrial reality. Therefore, this study proposes a merging technique of business process models that combines in a single source, some of the most used techniques available in the literature, and supports merging of models directed to a notation widely known and used by organizations. Furthermore, it also proposes the implementation of a tool, based on this technique, which was created to define the similarity and support the integration of models in a semi-automatic way. Lastly, experimental studies were performed with analysts who solved six scenarios of merging models, both manually and with the help of this tool. The result showed that the proposed technique, in fact, improves the accuracy and reduces composition effort, providing cost savings and increased productivity.

因應資訊化作業，大型企業組織透過企業資源規劃系統來整合組織內部與外部的資訊，以促進各種不同的商業功能間資訊的流動與交換。企業資源規劃系統中的主要模組包括商業流程管理。傳統商業流程管理著重在商業處理的自動化。先進的商業流程管理整合了流程邏輯與商業邏輯的功能，以有助於商業策略的規劃。商業流程管理的生命週期包括流程設計、系統配置、流程啟動、診斷四個階段。現有的研究多集中在前三個階段，較少與診斷有關的研究。本篇論文針對商業流程管理系統，研發系統發生錯誤時的診斷工具。本論文提出了診斷模型。此模型由使用者反應的問題中，定義錯誤類別、歸納使用者外部資訊，由商業規則和資料庫綱要中參考整合限制，並對應到系統的內部資訊。我們也開發了追蹤工具，追蹤錯誤可能的發生點，並依不同類別進行問題偵錯。除了針對本身的工作流程中的活動，也對前後的活動進行搜尋，以縮小錯誤偵測的範圍，協助資訊人員有效率排除錯誤。本論文根據一家電子公司的商業流程管理系統的個案研究，顯示我們所提出的診斷模型與追蹤工具有助於問題的偵錯。 關鍵字: 商業流程管理、診斷工具、商業邏輯 / An Enterprise Resource Panning (ERP) system integrates internal and external information andfacilitates the flow of information between all business functions inside and outside an organization. One of the main components of an ERP is the Business Process Management (BPM). Traditional BPM focues on the automation of business processes while advanced BPM has been extended to integrate with process logics and business logics for business strategy. The life cycle of a BPM system consists of process design, system configuration process enactment and diagnosis phases.Much research has been done on the first three phases. Little attension has been paid to the diagnosis phase. This thesis focuses on the design and implementation of a diagnosis tool for BPM systems. We propose a diagnosis model to represent the external and internal view of an error event. This diagnosis model is helpful for the troibleshouting to capture the status of an error event. Moreover, a bug tracer system is devlopement based on the proposed diagnosis model to diagnose the problem of workflow activities, and also trace before and after activities in the workflow, narrow the scope of error detection. Case studies from an electronic company demonstrate that the proposed diagnosis model and the tracer tool are helpful for troubleshooting. Keywords: Business Process Management, Diagnosis Tool, Business Logic

Thesis (M.B.A.)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.

Business process management (BPM) is a philosophical approach to organisation-wide management in which the focus is on the processes through which it operates, and in particular the streamlining and optimising of these processes, for which software solutions may be used. CTexT is an intrapreneurial software organisation that has been experiencing problems with software development due to a lack of formal processes relating to customer support, versioning, configuration, quality, risk and project management. The objective of the study is to determine whether the implementation of an electronic BPM system can effectively solve CTexT's development problems and thereby improve its overall software development capacity. More specifically, the focus is on i) the effect of the resulting standardisation on creativity and innovation, and ii) implementation matters, such as the type of processes that can be subjected to an electronic system, and how CTexT can overcome the time and cost constraints of such a system. The study investigates these questions by means of a literature investigation in combination with interviews with knowledgeable respondents from other innovative and software organisations. Interviews with six employees from CTexT determine the relevance of these findings and highlight critical areas for process improvement. Since BPM systems improve organisational efficiencies and are generally employed in larger corporate contexts marked by transactional and repetitive activities where they enforce administrative rules, the conclusion is drawn that a BPM system will not be suitable for an intrapreneurial organisation, and that it is likely to cause more disruption to the creative environment than improve its operations. It is further shown that although a BPM system is theoretically applicable to software development, it generally does not seem to be applied practically in the industry, and the suitability of this process as manageable through a BPM system is seriously questioned. Instead, the research points to improvement through the application of software development methodologies and a holistic approach towards BPM. The investigation at CTexT confirms that its development problems relate to flawed methodologies and that remedies should therefore focus on improving its methodologies and controlling certain aspects of the software development life cycle by means of suitable software tools. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007

Over the past decade, the ubiquity of business processes and their need for ongoing management in the same manner as other corporate assets has been recognized through the establishment of a dedicated research area: Business Process Management (or BPM). There are a wide range of potential software technologies on which a BPM o®ering can be founded. Although there is signi¯cant variation between these alternatives, they all share one common factor { their execution occurs on the basis of a business process model { and consequently, this ¯eld of technologies can be termed Process-Aware Information Systems (or PAIS). This thesis develops a conceptual foundation for PAIS based on the results of a detailed examination of contemporary o®erings including work°ow and case han- dling systems, business process modelling languages and web service composition languages. This foundation is based on 126 patterns that identify recurrent core constructs in the control-°ow, data and resource perspectives of PAIS. These patterns have been used to evaluate some of the leading systems and business process modelling languages. It also proposes a generic graphical language for de¯ning exception handling strategies that span these perspectives. On the basis of these insights, a comprehensive reference language { newYAWL { is developed for business process modelling and enactment. This language is formally de¯ned and an abstract syntax and operational semantics are provided for it. An assessment of its capabilities is provided through a comprehensive patterns-based analysis which allows direct comparison of its functionality with other PAIS. newYAWL serves as a reference language and many of the ideas embodied within it are also applicable to existing languages and systems. The ultimate goal of both the patterns and newYAWL is to improve the support and applicability of PAIS.

In recent years businesses around the world have been facing the challenges of a rapidly changing business and technology environment. As a result, organisations are paying more attention to supporting business process management by adapting to the dynamic environment. With the increased complexity and uncertainty in business operations, adaptive and collaborative business process and exception management (EM) are gaining attention. In the logistics industry, the growing importance of logistics worldwide as well as the increasing complexity of logistics networks and the service requirement of customers has become a challenge. The current logistics exceptions are managed using human brain power together with the traditional workflow technology-based supply-chain management or other logistics tools. The traditional workflow technology models and manages business processes and anticipated exceptions based on predefined logical procedures of activities from a centralised perspective. This situation offers inadequate decision support for flexibility and adaptability in logistics EM. The traditional workflow technology is also limited to monitoring the logistics activities in real-time to detect and resolve exceptions in a timely manner. To mitigate these problems, an intelligent agent incorporating business activity monitoring (BAM) decision support approach in logistics EM has been proposed and investigated in this research. This research creates and evaluates two IT designed artefacts (conceptual framework and prototype) intended to efficiently and automatically monitor and handle logistics exceptions. It follows a design science research strategy. The design, development, and evaluation adhere to the principles enunciated in the design science literature. The aim of this research is to solve the important logistics EM problem in a more effective and efficient manner. Two designed artefacts were strictly informed by, and incorporated with, three different theories. An exploratory case study and a later confirmatory case study assisted in the rigorous derivation of the design and framework. The results of the confirmatory case study were used in particular to refine the designed artefacts. Such a build-and-evaluate loop iterated several times before the final designed artefacts were generated. The designed artefacts were then evaluated empirically via a field experiment. The research included both a technical presentation and a practical framing in terms of application in the logistics exception monitoring and handling domain. In this study, there were three interrelated research phases. In the first research phase, a decision-making conceptual framework (an artefact) for design and development of real-time logistics EM system was developed. To enable more efficient decision support practices for logistics EM, the characteristics of logistics exceptions were first examined and identified. The logistics exception analysis was conducted through a comprehensive literature review and an exploratory case study conducted in a major logistics company in Australia. The logistics exceptions were then classified into known and knowable categories, based on the Cynefin sense-making framework (Snowden, 2002). On the basis of the logistics analysis, informed by Gartner’s three-layer BAM architecture (Dresner, 2003), the Cynefin sense-making framework decision models (Snowden, 2002), and Simon’s (1977) decision-making/problem-solving process, the real-time logistics EM conceptual framework was depicted. The BAM architecture provided the real-time decision support. Based on Cynefin’s decision model, adaptive business process flow was chosen for known and knowable logistics exceptions to speed up the decision-making process. In addition, Simon’s process theory was deployed to model the diagnosing process for known and knowable logistics exceptions. This conceptual model guided the analysis, design, and development for real-time logistics EM systems. In the second research phase, based on the logistics EM conceptual framework, a Web-service-multi-agent-based real-time logistics EM system (an artefact) was designed and developed. Intelligent agent technology was applied to deal with the complex, dynamic, and distributed logistics EM processes. Web-services techniques were proposed for more interoperability and scalability in network-based business environment. By integrating agent technology with Web-services to make use of the advantages from both, this approach provided a more intelligent, flexible, autonomous, and comprehensive solution to real-time logistics EM. In the third research phase, two designed artefacts were evaluated via a confirmatory case study and a field experiment. The confirmatory case study was conducted to collect feedback on the two designed artefacts (i.e., conceptual framework and prototype system) to refine them. The field experiment was then conducted to investigate the proposed logistics EM prototype system decision support effectiveness and efficiency by comparing the human decision-making performance with/without the logistics EM decision support facility. The evaluation results indicated that the proposed logistics EM prototype outperformed the one without logistics EM decision support in terms of more efficient decision process, higher decision outcome quality, and better user perception. The two designed artefacts were the major contributions of this research. They add knowledge to decision theory and practice. The artefacts are the real-time extension for Simon’s (1977) classic decision-making/problem-solving process model in logistics EM by incorporating BAM (Dresner, 2003). In addition, by adding the Cynefin sense-making framework (Snowden, 2002), the artefacts provide a more efficient decision-making routine for logistics EM. This research provides the first attempt (to the best of the researcher’s knowledge) to design a real-time logistics EM decision support mechanism based on decision science theories. To demonstrate the usability of the proposed conceptual framework, a logistics EM decision support prototype was designed, developed, and evaluated. For practice, the logistics exceptions classification, logistics EM conceptual framework, and incorporating agent technologies into logistics EM all will assist logistics companies to develop their logistics exception handling decision-making strategies and solutions.