Due to uncertainty in manufacturing processes, applied probability and statistics have been widely applied for quality and productivity improvement. In spite of significant achievements made in causality modeling for control of process variations, there exists a lack of understanding on error equivalence phenomenon, which concerns the mechanism that different error sources result in identical variation patterns on part features. This so called error equivalence phenomenon could have dual effects on dimensional control: significantly increasing the complexity of root cause identification, and providing an opportunity to use one error source to counteract or compensate the others. Most of previous research has focused on analyses of individual errors, process modeling of variation propagation, process diagnosis, reduction of sensing noise, and error compensation for machine tool. This dissertation presents a mathematical formulation of the error equivalence to achieve a better, insightful understanding, and control of manufacturing process. The first issue to be studied is mathematical modeling of the error equivalence phenomenon in manufacturing to predict product variation. Using kinematic analysis and analytical geometry, the research derives an error equivalence model that can transform different types of errors to the equivalent amount of one base error. A causal process model is then developed to predict the joint impact of multiple process errors on product features. Second, error equivalence analysis is conducted for root cause identification. Based on the error equivalence modeling, this study proposes a sequential root cause identification procedure to detect and pinpoint the error sources. Comparing with the conventional measurement strategy, the proposed sequential procedure identifies the potential error sources more effectively. Finally, an error-canceling-error compensation strategy with integration of statistical quality control is proposed. A novel error compensation approach has been proposed to compensate for process errors by controlling the base error. The adjustment process and product quality will be monitored by quality control charts. Based on the monitoring results, an updating scheme is developed to enhance the stability and sensitivity of the compensation algorithm. These aspects constitute the "Error Equivalence Theory". The research will lead to new analytical tools and algorithms for continuous variation reduction and quality improvement in manufacturing.

Siekiant korektiškai apibrėžti ilgai trunkantį paslaugomis pagrįstą verslo procesą, būtina specifikuoti šiuos proceso parametrus: duomenų srautus, verslo partnerius ir jų vykdomus veiksmus, proceso būsenų kaitą bei metodus ilgai trunkančioms transakcijos kompensuoti. Tai gali būti atliekama unifikuojant SAGA ir komunikacinių kilpų modelius. Siekiant aiškumo, pasiūlyti du griežtos formos diagramų tipai. Pateikto formalaus metamodelio pagrindu realizuotas grafinio redaktoriaus prototipas, skirtas modeliuoti paslaugomis pagrįstus procesus. Bandymu metu redaktoriumi sukurti eksperimentiniai verslo procesų modeliai. / To define long-running, service-oriented business process fully and correctly, it is necessary to specify following properties: data flows, business partners along with their actions, and state dynamics of entire process. Also, it is required to define mechanics which can be used to compensate failed long-running transactions. This can be achieved by combining SAGA and Communicative Action Loop models. To gain robustness, it was suggested to use two types of strictly formatted diagrams. A formal metamodel was proposed as a basis for a graphical editor which can be used to define a service-oriented business process and its properties. Finally, a prototype of graphical editor was developed and used to specify example business processes.

Enacting business processes in process engines requires the coverage of control flow, resource assignments, and process data. While the first two aspects are well supported in current process engines, data dependencies need to be added and maintained manually by a process engineer. Thus, this task is error-prone and time-consuming. In this report, we address the problem of modeling processes with complex data dependencies, e.g., m:n relationships, and their automatic enactment from process models. First, we extend BPMN data objects with few annotations to allow data dependency handling as well as data instance differentiation. Second, we introduce a pattern-based approach to derive SQL queries from process models utilizing the above mentioned extensions. Therewith, we allow automatic enactment of data-aware BPMN process models. We implemented our approach for the Activiti process engine to show applicability. / Die Ausführung von Geschäftsprozessen in Process Engines benötigt Informationen über den Kontrollfluss, die Rollenzuordnungen und die Datenabhängigkeiten. Während die ersten beiden Aspekte bereits automatisiert von Process Engines unterstützt werden, müssen die Datenabhängigkeiten durch einen Prozessingenieur manuell hinzugefügt und gewartet werden. Allerdings ist diese Aufgabe sehr fehleranfällig und zeitintensiv. In diesem Report zeigen wir wie Prozesse mit komplexen Datenabhängigkeiten, z.B. m:n Beziehungen, modelliert und automatisiert ausgeführt werden können. Dazu erweitern wir zuerst BPMN Datenobjekte mit wenigen Annotationen, um das Handling von Datenabhängikeiten sowie die Differenzierung von Datenobjektinstanzen zu ermöglichen. Danach beschreiben wir einen Pattern-basierten Ansatz, um SQL-Queries, unter Nutzung der oben erwähnten Erweiterungen, aus Prozessmodellen abzuleiten. Damit erlauben wir die automatisierte Ausführung von Daten-orientierten BPMN Prozessmodellen. Um die Anwendbarkeit unseres Ansatzen zu demonstieren, implementierten wir ihn für die Process Engine Activiti.

There is an increasing trend to consider the processes of an organization as one of its highly valuable assets. Processes are the reusable assets of an organization which define the procedures of routine working for accomplishing its goals. The software industry has the potential to become one of the most internationally dispersed high-tech industry. With growing importance of software and services sector, standardization of processes is also becoming crucial to maintain credibility in the market. Software development processes follow a lifecycle that is very similar to the software development lifecycle. Similarly, multiple phases of a process development lifecycle follow an iterative/incremental approach that leads to continuous process improvement. This incremental approach calls for a refinement based strategy to develop, execute and maintain software development processes. This thesis develops a conceptual foundation for refinement based development of software processes keeping in view the precise requirements for each individual phase of process development lifecycle. It exploits model driven engineering to present a multi-metamodel framework for the development of software processes, where each metamodel corresponds to a different phase of a process. A process undergoes a series of refinements till it is enriched with execution capabilities. Keeping in view the need to comply with the adopted standards, the architecture of process modeling approach exploits the concept of abstraction. This mechanism also caters for special circumstances where a software enterprise needs to follow multiple process standards for the same project. On the basis of the insights gained from the examination of contemporary offerings in this domain, the proposed process modeling framework tends to foster an architecture that is developed around the concepts of ''design by contract" and ''design for reuse". This allows to develop a process model that is modular in structure and guarantees the correctness of interactions between the constituent activities. Separation of concerns being the motivation, data-flow within a process is handled at a different abstraction level than the control-flow. Conformance between these levels allows to offer a bi-layered architecture that handles the flow of data through an underlying event management system. An assessment of the capabilities of the proposed approach is provided through a comprehensive patterns-based analysis, which allows a direct comparison of its functionality with other process modeling approaches.

Die Gestaltung betrieblicher Prozesse stellt heute einen wichtigen Wettbewerbsfaktor dar. Um am Markt erfolgreich agieren zu können, ist es notwendig, die eigenen Prozesse konsequent an den Bedürfnissen der Kunden auszurichten. Methoden der Prozessverbesserung beschreiben, welche Schritte hierfür durchzuführen sind. Modelle stellen dabei ein wesentliches Werkzeug für die Visualisierung der betrieblichen Abläufe dar. Gleichwohl wird in bestehenden Methoden der Prozessverbesserung nur unzureichend auf die systematische Nutzung und Wiederverwendung von Modellen eingegangen. Dadurch klafft eine Lücke zwischen erwartetem und tatsächlichem Nutzen des Modelleinsatzes im Rahmen der Prozessverbesserung. So wird insbesondere die methodische Nutzung und Auswertung von Modellen bisher entweder gar nicht oder lediglich isoliert von der Prozessverbesserung betrachtet. Damit existiert zwar eine Vielzahl an methodischen Puzzleteilen, eine durchgängige Unterstützung der Modellerstellung und -nutzung im Rahmen der Prozessverbesserung kann jedoch nicht erkannt werden. Die vorliegende Arbeit stellt sich diesem methodischen Defizit und beschreibt Schritt für Schritt, wie die Verwendung von Modellen im Rahmen der Prozessverbesserung systematisiert werden kann. Damit soll die Nutzung von Modellen im betrieblichen Alltag forciert und der Aufwand für die Modellierung langfristig reduziert werden.

The study of the software development process is a relatively new research area but it is growing rapidly. This development process, also called 'the software life cycle' or 'the software process', is the methodology used throughout the industry for the planning, design, implementation, testing and maintenance that takes place during the creation of a software product. Over the years a variety of different process models have been developed. From the numerous process models now available, project managers need validation of the choice he/she has made for a software development model that he/she believes will provide the best results. Yet the quality software so sought after by software project managers can be enhanced by improving the development process through which it is delivered. Well tested, reliable evidence is needed to assist these project managers in choosing and planning a superior software process as well as for improving the adopted software process. While some guidelines for software process validation and improvement have been provided, such as CMMI, quantitative evidence is, in fact, scarce. The quantitative evidence sometimes may not be able to be obtained from high level processes that refer to a planned process model, such as a waterfall model. Furthermore, there has been little analysis of low level processes. These low level processes refer to the actions of how a development team follow a high level software process model to develop a software product. We describe these low level processes as project enactment. Normally there is a gap between the high level software process and the project enactment. In order to improve this software development process, this gap needs to be identified, measured and analyzed. In this dissertation, we propose an approach that examines the deviation between a planned process model and the project enactment of that plan. We measure the discrepancy from two aspects: consistency and inconsistency. The analytical results of the proposed approach, which include both qualitative and quantitative data, provide powerful and precise evidence for tailoring, planning and selecting any software process model. The entire approach is composed of four major phases: 1) re-presentation of the planned process model, 2) pre-processing the low level process data, 3) process mining, and 4) analysis and comparison of the recovered process model and planned process model. We evaluate the proposed approach in three case studies: a small, a medium, and a large-sized project obtained from an industrial software development organization. The appropriate data on low level processes is collected and our approach is then applied to these projects individually. From each case study we then performed a detailed analysis of the inconsistencies that had surfaced as well as the consistencies between the plan and the enactment models. An analysis of the inconsistencies revealed that several 'agile' practices were introduced during the project's development even though the planned process model was initially based on 'ISO-12207' instead of the 'agile' method. In addition, our analysis identifies the patterns in the process that are frequently repeated. The outcome of the case studies shows that our approach is applicable to a range of software projects. The conclusions derived from these case studies confirmed that our approach could be used to enhance the entire software development process, including tailoring and assessment.

[pt] As despesas com saúde vêm crescendo constantemente nos últimos anos, tanto no Brasil como na maioria dos países desenvolvidos. Para fazer face a esta questão, agentes públicos e privados têm procurado melhorar a eficiência e eficácia dos sistemas de saúde, notadamente por meio do tema de planejamento e controle na área da saúde. Uma unidade de interesse particular em hospitais é o Centro Cirúrgico, pois frequentemente é a unidade de maior custo e também de maior receita do hospital, gerando grande impacto sobre o desempenho do mesmo. Todavia na maioria dos hospitais brasileiros as decisões em relação à gestão de leitos e gestão de salas de cirurgia são tomadas a partir de conhecimento tácito e observação empírica. Com isso, este estudo visa aplicar técnicas de análise, como modelagem de processos e simulação de Monte Carlo, a fim de proporcionar a tomada de decisão mais estruturada em relação ao planejamento e programação das cirurgias. Foi realizado um estudo de caso em um hospital público brasileiro, visando alcançar melhorias no processo de planejamento das cirurgias e diminuição no índice de suspensões. Como resultado foram feitas propostas de alteração no processo de planejamento de cirurgias do hospital e sugestão de padronizar o número de marcações de cirurgias com indicação de UTI para 5 ou 6 marcações diárias a fim de reduzir o índice de suspensão por falta de vaga nessa unidade. / [en] The health expenditures have increased in recent years, both in Brazil and in most developed countries. To address this issue, public and private players have sought to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of health systems, notably through the planning and control in healthcare. A unit that is of particular interest in hospitals is the operating theater as is often the largest cost unit and also higher hospital revenue, generating great impact on the performance of the same. However, in most Brazilian hospitals, decisions regarding the management of beds and operating room management are taken from tacit knowledge and empirical observation. Thus, the study aims to apply appropriate analysis technique, such as process modeling and Monte Carlo Simulation to provide a better-structured decision-making in relation to the planning and programming of surgeries. A case study was conducted at a public hospital in order to achieve improvements in the planning process of surgery and decrease in suspensions index. As a result were proposed amendments to the hospital s surgery planning process and suggested to standardize the number of surgeries markings with ICU indication for 5 or 6 markings daily to reduce the suspension rate due to lack of vacancy in that unit.

Submitted by Raniere Barreto (raniere.barros@ufvjm.edu.br) on 2018-05-04T20:00:25Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) renildo_lemos_santos.pdf: 1679624 bytes, checksum: 9384bbabd8d1eb283fe5114d4867e067 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Rodrigo Martins Cruz (rodrigo.cruz@ufvjm.edu.br) on 2018-05-14T14:19:16Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) renildo_lemos_santos.pdf: 1679624 bytes, checksum: 9384bbabd8d1eb283fe5114d4867e067 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-05-14T14:19:16Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) renildo_lemos_santos.pdf: 1679624 bytes, checksum: 9384bbabd8d1eb283fe5114d4867e067 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017 / Esta pesquisa aborda a implanta??o da gest?o de processos em uma Universidade Federal Multicampi em fases de expans?o e inicia??o de um processo de descentraliza??o administrativa. Apresenta a conceitua??o de processo e da gest?o de processo, sua import?ncia para as organiza??es, al?m de descrever as metodologias utilizadas para implanta??o desse modelo de gest?o. Destaca a mudan?a no modelo gerencial adotado pelo Governo Brasileiro na busca da efic?cia no uso dos recursos p?blicos, evidenciada nas seguintes a??es: a cria??o do GESP?BLICA, a institucionaliza??o da Carta de Servi?os ao Cidad?o e o Programa Eletr?nico Nacional. Neste estudo adotou-se o delineamento de campo devido ? inser??o do pesquisador no ambiente de estudos. A pesquisa teve como objetivo a realiza??o da modelagem do processo de compras, bem como a formaliza??o das principais atividades do processo. Os resultados contribu?ram para aprimorar a efici?ncia do processo pesquisado com a??es para corrigirem falhas detectadas durante o estudo. / Disserta??o (Mestrado Profissional) ? Programa de P?s-Gradua??o em Tecnologia, Sa?de e Sociedade, Universidade Federal dos Vales do Jequitinhonha e Mucuri, 2017. / This research is about the implantation of the processes management in a Multicampi Federal university which is in an expansion and initiation stage of an administrative decentralization process. It presents the conceptualization of the process and also the management process, its importance for the organizations, as well as the methodologies which are used for the implantation of this management model. It emphasizes the change in the managerial model adopted by the Brazilian government in quest for the effective usage of public resources, evinced by the following actions: the creation of the GESP?BLICA, the institutionalization of the service letter for citizens and the Electronic National Program. It was adopted, in this study, the delineation of the field research due to the insertion of the researcher in the study environment. The research has as its objective the accomplishment of the buying process modeling, as well as the formalization of the main activities of the process. The results have contributed to improve the efficiency of the researched process with actions to correct flaws detected throughout the study stage.

Un processus de conception que ce soit d'un produit ou d'un service est composé d'un grand nombre d'activités reliées par des échanges nombreux de données et d'informations. La qualité de ces échanges, appelés collaborations, nécessite d'être capable d'envoyer et de recevoir des informations et données utiles, compréhensibles et univoques pour les différents concepteurs impliqués. La problématique de ces travaux de thèse se focalise donc sur la définition et l'évaluation de la performance des collaborations, et par extension, du processus de conception dans sa totalité. Cette évaluation de la performance exige la définition de plusieurs éléments clefs tels que : les objets à évaluer, les indicateurs de performance et les variables d'actions. Afin de définir l'objet d'évaluation, ces travaux s'appuient sur une étude de la littérature afin de proposer un méta-modèle de la conception collaborative. La mesure de la performance de ces collaborations est quant à elle basée sur le concept d'interopérabilité. Cette mesure estime ainsi l'interopérabilité technique et sémantique des différentes collaborations élémentaires. Ces travaux se concluent par la proposition d'un cadre méthodologique outillé d'évaluation de la performance des collaborations. Par une approche en deux étapes (modélisation puis évaluation), ce cadre facilite l'identification des collaborations peu performantes et de leurs causes. Ce cadre est illustré et partiellement validé à l'aide d'un exemple académique et d'une étude de cas dans le cadre de la conception. / A design process, whether for a product or for a service, is composed of a large number of activities connected by many data and information exchanges. The quality of these exchanges, called collaborations, requires being able to send and receive data and information which are useful, understandable and unambiguous to the different designers involved. The research question is thus focused on the definition and evaluation of the performance of collaborations, and by extension, of the design process in its entirety. This performance evaluation requires the definition of several key elements such as object(s) to be evaluated, the performance indicator(s) and action variable(s).In order to define the object of evaluation, this research relies on a study of the literature resulting in a meta-model of collaborative process. The measurement of the performance of these collaborations is for its part based on the concept of interoperability. The measurement of the performance of the collaborations is for its part based on the concept of interoperability. Furthermore, this measure estimates the technical and conceptual interoperability of the different elementary collaborations. This work is concluded by proposing a tooled methodological framework for collaborations' performance evaluation. Through a two-step approach (modeling and evaluation), this framework facilitates the identification of inefficient collaborations and their causes. This framework is illustrated and partially validated using an academic example and a case study in design domain.

Context. How end user development can be enabled and made attainable through the use of a web based graphical user interface, in systems that contains logic for handling BPMN flows as variation points. Investigated from a UX and usability perspective. Objectives. Designing prototypes of such a web-based interface, and then evaluating the usability with regards to the usability attributes effectiveness and learnability, with the goal finding relevant usability issues & solutions as well as investigating how the two usability attributes affected the participants’ subjective satisfaction. Methods. Two prototype versions were implemented, one based upon the other. A usability inspection (expert evaluation) was performed after the first prototype version (named alpha) was finished and the second version (named beta) was built based on that feedback. The usability of the prototypes were then evaluated in usability test sessions using the think aloud method together with the SUS (System Usability Scale) questionnaire.The recorded data from the usability test sessions was analysed. Usability issues & solutions were noted, filtered, tagged and grouped by design principle with the goal of looking for patterns. SUS scores were calculated from the questionnaires. Additional factor analysis was performed on the SUS data to get separate usability and learnability scores. Results. The results consisted of SUS scores for both prototypes together with learnability and usability scores. Common and noteworthy usability issues & solutions grouped by design principle. Detailed appendixes with scenarios exemplifying recorded video & voice data for four of the most relevant test participants. Conclusions. The two prototypes were compared. Improvements to effectiveness and learnability was found to have a positive impact on the participants’ subjective satisfaction in the described context. Additionally, a number of usability issues and solutions was identified that could be of value when developing similar software. In summary, the following findings were made related to effectiveness: Adding constraints to the number of options available to users helped increase effectiveness. The lack of keyboard shortcuts was a deal breaker for many users and had a negative impact on effectiveness.. Consistency in navigation was more important than expected. The lack of functionality for saving drafts in the browser, without downloading, was something that most users expected and was surprised not to find. Several users expected their drafts to be automatically saved. They were frustrated when their changes were lost without warning. The lack of an undo function was also a big issue for users, causing problems with recovery. Giving immediate feedback with a notification popup after users had deployed a flow worked well and was easier to implement than expected. The connection tool that ship with bpmn-js was hard to learn and use for several users. Additionally, some learnability related findings: Sandbox intended to boost learnability but caused problems with effectiveness. The BPMN notation was not familiar to the test participants. Some training or introduction would have been necessary in a real usage scenario. When important functionality was concealed in submenus it was harder for users to learn how to operate the editor, specifically a problem with the context pad. Properties panel. Issues with visibility of single items due to tabs being too cluttered. Affordance issues on input/output parameters tab. Consistency issue with the bpmn.io logo being placed in the where users expected a save button. Consistency. Negative impact on learnability due to lack of keyboard shortcuts. Users likely to learn faster if they could use the shortcuts they already know. Placement of the download button not consistent with other webapps. Unconventional to only have drag and drop for upload and no button. Issues with visibility and consistency related to maximizing/minimizing editor in beta prototype. Familiarity findings related to deploy button colour and label might have affected learnability.