A tecnologia de workflow encontra-se atualmente ainda em fase inicial, porém, apresentando um grande crescimento nos últimos anos. Negócios em todo mundo estão usando o suporte automatizado do workflow para tornar suas ilhas de automação administrativas em eficiente e efetivos instrumentos com conseqüências comerciais importantes. Esta tecnologia facilita, através de softwares e metodologias, a modelagem do processo de negócio como uma especificação de workflow, a reengenharia de processos especificados e, finalmente, a automação do processo de negócio. Porém, não existe uma padronização para esta tecnologia. Uma atenção especial está sendo dada por parte dos pesquisadores no intuito de padronizar conceitos que sejam aceitos pela comunidade em geral, ou seja, usuários, desenvolvedores e os próprios pesquisadores. Este trabalho tem como finalidade apresentar e discutir esta tecnologia, mais especificamente sobre uma de suas funcionalidades, a alocação de atividades. A alocação de atividades é responsável pela distribuição das atividades às pessoas aptas por sua execução. Os principais conceitos envolvidos na tecnologia são citados e comentados. O problema da alocação é apresentado, discutido e soluções são propostas. Finalmente, é implementado um protótipo para avaliar e validar as idéias apresentadas. / The workflow technology is in an initial phase, however, it has been growing in the last years. Business all over the world are using automated support of workflow to turn their islands of automated administrations into an efficient and effective instrument with important commercial consequences. This technology makes easy the business process modeling as a workflow specification, the process specification reengineering and, last, the business process automation, by the use of software and methodologies. However, a standard for this technology does not exist. A special attention has been giving by the academic community to obtain a standard, which will be accepted by the users, the developers and the academic comunity. This work has the goal of presenting and discussing this techonology, more specifically about the problem of activities allocation in a workflow system. The activities allocation is responsible for the distribution of an activity to the right person. The main concepts related to workflow are presented and discussed. The allocation problem is presented, discussed and solutions are suggested. A prototype is implemented to evaluate the presented ideas.

A tecnologia de workflow encontra-se atualmente ainda em fase inicial, porém, apresentando um grande crescimento nos últimos anos. Negócios em todo mundo estão usando o suporte automatizado do workflow para tornar suas ilhas de automação administrativas em eficiente e efetivos instrumentos com conseqüências comerciais importantes. Esta tecnologia facilita, através de softwares e metodologias, a modelagem do processo de negócio como uma especificação de workflow, a reengenharia de processos especificados e, finalmente, a automação do processo de negócio. Porém, não existe uma padronização para esta tecnologia. Uma atenção especial está sendo dada por parte dos pesquisadores no intuito de padronizar conceitos que sejam aceitos pela comunidade em geral, ou seja, usuários, desenvolvedores e os próprios pesquisadores. Este trabalho tem como finalidade apresentar e discutir esta tecnologia, mais especificamente sobre uma de suas funcionalidades, a alocação de atividades. A alocação de atividades é responsável pela distribuição das atividades às pessoas aptas por sua execução. Os principais conceitos envolvidos na tecnologia são citados e comentados. O problema da alocação é apresentado, discutido e soluções são propostas. Finalmente, é implementado um protótipo para avaliar e validar as idéias apresentadas. / The workflow technology is in an initial phase, however, it has been growing in the last years. Business all over the world are using automated support of workflow to turn their islands of automated administrations into an efficient and effective instrument with important commercial consequences. This technology makes easy the business process modeling as a workflow specification, the process specification reengineering and, last, the business process automation, by the use of software and methodologies. However, a standard for this technology does not exist. A special attention has been giving by the academic community to obtain a standard, which will be accepted by the users, the developers and the academic comunity. This work has the goal of presenting and discussing this techonology, more specifically about the problem of activities allocation in a workflow system. The activities allocation is responsible for the distribution of an activity to the right person. The main concepts related to workflow are presented and discussed. The allocation problem is presented, discussed and solutions are suggested. A prototype is implemented to evaluate the presented ideas.

A tecnologia de workflow encontra-se atualmente ainda em fase inicial, porém, apresentando um grande crescimento nos últimos anos. Negócios em todo mundo estão usando o suporte automatizado do workflow para tornar suas ilhas de automação administrativas em eficiente e efetivos instrumentos com conseqüências comerciais importantes. Esta tecnologia facilita, através de softwares e metodologias, a modelagem do processo de negócio como uma especificação de workflow, a reengenharia de processos especificados e, finalmente, a automação do processo de negócio. Porém, não existe uma padronização para esta tecnologia. Uma atenção especial está sendo dada por parte dos pesquisadores no intuito de padronizar conceitos que sejam aceitos pela comunidade em geral, ou seja, usuários, desenvolvedores e os próprios pesquisadores. Este trabalho tem como finalidade apresentar e discutir esta tecnologia, mais especificamente sobre uma de suas funcionalidades, a alocação de atividades. A alocação de atividades é responsável pela distribuição das atividades às pessoas aptas por sua execução. Os principais conceitos envolvidos na tecnologia são citados e comentados. O problema da alocação é apresentado, discutido e soluções são propostas. Finalmente, é implementado um protótipo para avaliar e validar as idéias apresentadas. / The workflow technology is in an initial phase, however, it has been growing in the last years. Business all over the world are using automated support of workflow to turn their islands of automated administrations into an efficient and effective instrument with important commercial consequences. This technology makes easy the business process modeling as a workflow specification, the process specification reengineering and, last, the business process automation, by the use of software and methodologies. However, a standard for this technology does not exist. A special attention has been giving by the academic community to obtain a standard, which will be accepted by the users, the developers and the academic comunity. This work has the goal of presenting and discussing this techonology, more specifically about the problem of activities allocation in a workflow system. The activities allocation is responsible for the distribution of an activity to the right person. The main concepts related to workflow are presented and discussed. The allocation problem is presented, discussed and solutions are suggested. A prototype is implemented to evaluate the presented ideas.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-17T14:52:55Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Hugo Sampaio Fialho.pdf: 1392552 bytes, checksum: e55123b12ce9538699537f943a47229e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2003-11-26 / FUNDAÇÃO DE AMPARO À PESQUISA E AO DESENVOLVIMENTO CIENTIFICO E TECNOLÓGICO DO MARANHÃO / The Workflow Management Systems (WfMS) have been used in many organizations with the objective of reducing, improve and control the workflow in their internal process. Current WfMS are, usually, designed to the administration of loosely structured businesses process, where the logical flow of the tasks totally predefined. However, not all business processess are like this. With the coming of the new communication technologies among the 6 organizations, the business environment becoming more and more dynamic demanding more complex processes. Considering this scenario, existent WfMS have some disadvantages and limitations and need improvements and modifications. Many researchers have been exploring the power of software agent's technology to provide solutions for current WfMS. There are several approaches, some are improvements with agents, another are based on agents. In this work we present the WorkFlage as a tool for the development Workflow Management Systems based on to technologies of Software Agents for the model proposed by the project WEICOT. The work is organized in 9 chapters where we cover from the technology of Workflow, going through a summary of the agents' technology, the state of the art in workflow based on agents, to case stud y of materials purchase where we demonstrate the application of the WorkFlage tool. At the end of this work we will make some final considerations where we propose improvements and suggestions for future works. / Os Sistemas de Gerenciamento de Workflow (WfMS) tem sido utilizados em muitas organizações com o objetivo de reduzir, melhorar e controlar o fluxo de trabalho nos seus processos internos. Os WfMS atuais são, quase sempre, voltados para o gerenciamento de processo de negócios pouco estruturados onde o fluxo lógico das tarefas é totalmente predefinido. Porém, nem todos os processos de negócios são assim. Com o advento das novas tecnologias de comunicação entre as organizações, o ambiente do negócio está se tornando cada vez mais dinâmico e vem exigindo processos mais complexos. Diante deste cenário, os WfMS existentes tem algumas desvantagens e limitações e necessitam de melhorias e modificações. Muitos pesquisadores têm explorado o poder da tecnologia de agente de software para prover soluções para os WfMS atuais. Há varias abordagens, algumas são melhorias com agentes, outras são baseadas em agentes. Neste trabalho apresentamos a WorkFlage como uma ferramenta para o desenvolvimento de Sistemas de Gerenciamento de Workflow baseado na tecnologia de Agentes de Software, utilizando o modelo proposto pelo projeto WEICOT. O trabalho esta organizado em 9 capítulos onde abordamos deste a tecnologia de Workflow, passando por um resumo da tecnologia de agentes, o estado da arte em Workflows baseados em agentes, indo até um estudo de caso de compra de materiais onde demonstramos a aplicação da ferramenta WorkFlage. Ao final deste trabalho faremos algumas considerações finais onde propomos melhorias e sugestões para trabalhos futuros.

Das Thema Workflow-Management hat in den letzten Jahren stark an Bedeutung gewonnen, so dass es in der Zwischenzeit eine Reihe von Forschungsarbeiten gibt und auch verschiedene kommerzielle Workflow-Management-Systeme am Markt verfügbar sind. Ein Problem der meisten kommerziellen Systeme ist, dass sie zur Laufzeit nicht auf Ereignisse reagieren können und keine Möglichkeit bieten die Workflows zur Laufzeit an geänderte Bedingungen anzupassen. In vielen Anwendungsbereichen, wie der Medizin, ist dies aber von entscheidender Bedeutung. Im Rahmen des Projekts 'AgentWork' wird ein Workflow-Management-System entwickelt, dass die dynamische Adaptation der Workflows zur Laufzeit ermöglicht. Die vorliegende Arbeit befasst sich mit der Konzeption und prototypischen Implementierung einer Workflow Engine, die eine dynamische Unterbrechung der Workflows zur Laufzeit gestattet. Dies bildet die Grundlage für die anschließende Adaptation der Workflows.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-07-29T14:57:48Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Mestrado Luiz Loja.pdf: 2304806 bytes, checksum: 345f8fb0018e00778e9d22ef4a49b0e2 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-02-10 / To offer products and services, organizations need to execute business processes. The effectiveness of these processes is critical to the success of any organization. For this reason, there have been major efforts to develop techniques and tools aimed at the improvement of business processes. One of the results of these efforts are the BPMS ( textit Business Process Management Systems), software that help to define, analyze, and manage business processes. Although there are many BPMS available, current systems only provide support for running a limited set of processes. Notably, BPMS do not allow the execution of flexible processes, restricting its operations to defined processes. In addition, they do not provide a collaborative environment for process modeling. This paper presents a software architecture for management of business processes that overcomes these limitations of current BPMS. The architecture was used to implement a software tool called Sinfonia which includes a metamodel for business processes, a process execution engine and a graphical process modeler. The innovative aspects of the proposals of this work include features such as support for defining and implementing flexible processes, such as empirical and textit adhoc processes, and support for modeling collaborative processes. Sinfonia has enough expressive power to define and implement key business process standards described in the literature. The ability of this tool to express flexible processes and to promote collaboration in the modeling of business processes were evaluated in an experiment involving fourteen participants. The results of this experiment provide evidence that Sinfonia contributes to the evolution of BPMS. / Para realizar serviços e produtos, as organizações precisam executar processos de negócio. A efetividade destes processos é um fator crítico para o sucesso de qualquer organização. Por essa razão, tem havido grandes esforços para o desenvolvimento de técnicas e ferramentas dirigidas para a melhoria de processos de negócio. Um dos resultados produzidos por esses esforços são os BPMS (Business Process Management Systems), softwares que auxiliam a definição, análise, e gerenciamento de processos de negócio. Embora existam diversos BPMS disponíveis, os sistemas atuais apenas provêem suporte à execução de um conjunto limitado de processos. Notadamente os BPMS não permitem a execução de processos flexíveis, restringindo sua atuação aos processos definidos. Além disso, eles não proporcionam um ambiente colaborativo de modelagem de processos. Este trabalho apresenta uma arquitetura de software para gerência de processos de negócio que supera essas limitações dos BPMS atuais. A arquitetura foi empregada para a implementação de uma ferramenta de software denominada Sinfonia, que contempla um metamodelo de processos de negócio, uma máquina de execução de processos e um modelador gráfico de processos. Os aspectos inovadores das propostas do presente trabalho abrangem características como o suporte à definição e execução de processos flexíveis, tais como processos empíricos e ad hoc, e o apoio à modelagem colaborativa de processos. A ferramenta Sinfonia tem poder de expressão suficiente para definir e executar os principais padrões de processos de negócio descritos na literatura. A capacidade dessa ferramenta de expressar processos flexíveis e de promover a colaboração na modelagem de processos de negócio foram avaliadas em um experimento envolvendo quatorze participantes. Os resultados desse experimento provêem evidências de que Sinfonia contribui para a evolução dos BPMS.

Im Rahmen des Projektes 'HematoWork' sollen Workflow-Management-Systeme zur Üerwachung von onkologischen Behandlungsabl'äufen genutzt werden. Im Rahmen des zu schaffenden Gesamtsystems werden neben dem WfMS verschiedene Applikationen eingesetzt. Als Middleware wird im Projekt die Anwendbarkeit von CORBA untersucht. Damit wurde es nötig, das Zusammenspiel von CORBA und WfMS, speziell am Beispiel von IBM FlowMark zu untersuchen. Um Methoden von CORBA-Objekten als Applikationen oder in Übergangsbedingungen im Kontrollfluß von WfMS verwenden zu können, werden in der Arbeit sowohl Aspekte zur Workflow-Definitionszeit als auch zur Laufzeit untersucht. Neben einer neuen, von technischen Aspekten des CORBA- Methodenaufrufs abstrahierenden Workflow-Modellierungssprache und einem entsprechenden Compiler in die Workflow-Modellierungssprache von IBM FlowMark wurde eine Datenbank eingeführt, die dem Management der Lebensdauer und Gültigkeit von Daten, die durch CORBA-Objekte erzeugt oder repräsentiert werden, dient.

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

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