資訊科技的進步，使得企業競爭的方式產生了根本性的改變，由過去單一企業的競爭，朝向跨組織整合的方向發展。企業間無論透過併購或策略聯盟的手段，皆希望整合上下游、提昇效率，以提高整體競爭力。而整體服務水準的提升，有賴於跨組織流程與資訊上的整合，使客戶的需求可以快速被滿足。工作流在跨組織流程中扮演極為關鍵性的角色，它結合企業邏輯、人員作業、組織資訊科技，主導企業流程，並直接影響到作業的品質與效率。 　　本研究採個案研究方式，選擇一國際海運物流集團，實地訪談各子公司，分析海運物流業者跨組織的整合運作。從企業流程與工作流的配合中，架構出資訊在跨組織企業中的傳遞，並描繪出資訊科技在工作流中所扮演的角色。結合企業流程、工作流、資訊架構此三個面向的觀點，探討企業工作流中的問題、資訊不連續的中斷點、跨組織工作流管理的困難點、以及資訊系統整合的問題。 　　經問題探討與流程分析，站在資訊整合、工作流資訊化、自動化的觀點，本研究針對個案集團提出新的工作流模式，為其規劃出與工作流整合之資訊系統，同時定義及強化資訊系統在可見性與自動追蹤、稽催上的角色。

<p>More and more print jobs are delivered from customer to printer digitally over the Internet. Although Internet-based job delivery can be highly efficient, companies in the graphic arts and printing industry often suffer unnecessary costs related to this type of inflow of print jobs to their production workflows. One of the reasons for this is the lack of a well-defined infrastructure for delivering print jobs digitally over the Internet. </p><p>This thesis presents INFLOW - a prototype for a print job delivery system for the graphic arts and printing industry. INFLOW is a web-based job delivery system that is hosted on an Internet-connected server by the organization receiving the print jobs. Focus has been on creating a system that is easy to use, highly customizable, secure, and easy to integrate with existing and future systems from third-party vendors. INFLOW has been implemented using open standards, such as XML and JDF (Job Definition Format). </p><p>The requirements for ease-of-use, high customizability and security are met by choosing a web-based architecture. The client side is implemented using standard web technologies such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript while the serverside is based on J2EE, Java Servlets and Java Server Pages (JSP). Using a web browser as a job delivery client provides a highly customizable user interface and built in support for encrypted file transfers using HTTPS (HTTP over SSL). </p><p>Process automation and easy integration with other print production systems is facilitated with CIP4’s JDF (Job Definition Format). INFLOW also supports"hot folder workflows"for integration with older preflight software and other hot folder-based software common in prepress workflows.</p>

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

Dieser Artikel stellt ein Framework zur Generierung von Metadaten der technischen Randbedingungen eines Ingests vor, welches an der Professur Medieninformatik im Rahmen des Projektes ValidAX zur Digitalisierung verschiedener Videokassettenformate entwickelt wurde. Insbesondere werden hierbei die Architektur und der Einsatz näher beleuchtet. / The process of introducing media into an IT-based system during acquisition is called ingest. The appropriate handling of media requires the extraction of additional metadata being realized by automatic extraction and analysis as well as manual annotation. We assume, that metadata about technical constraints of the ingest process itself implies a benefit for the media lifecycle. In this context the challenge is the automation.

Der weltweit steigende Bedarf an Energie und natürlichen Ressourcen, insbesondere an fossilen Brennstoffen und seltenen Metallen, sowie die angestrebte Reduktion des CO2-Ausstoßes führen zu steigenden Preisen für Energie und Rohstoffe. Der Energie- und Ressourcenbedarf muss daher neben der Funktionalität und den Kosten eines technischen Produkts in Planungs- und Entwicklungsprozesse einbezogen werden. Für eine Minimierung des Energie- und Ressourcenbedarfs sind insbesondere die frühen Phasen der Produktentwicklung von großem Interesse, da in diesen Phasen die wesentlichen Eigenschaften eines Produkts für den gesamten Lebenszyklus zu großen Teilen festgelegt werden. Durch die Forderung nach kürzeren Markteinführungszeiten bei gleichzeitigem Anstieg der Komplexität technischer Produkte ist der Einsatz von Softwaresystemen zur Unterstützung der Planungs- und Entwicklungsprozesse unabdingbar. Die Zielstellung der vorliegenden Arbeit ist die Entwicklung und Realisierung von Methoden und Verfahren zur softwaretechnischen Unterstützung ausgewählter Abläufe der Produktentwicklung. Die gewählten Abläufe sind die Ausarbeitung von Anforderungsspezifikationen für technische Produkte, die Priorisierung von Anforderungen sowie die Analyse und Bewertung des Energiebedarfs von Werkzeugmaschinen. Der Schwerpunkt der Methoden und Verfahren liegt einerseits auf der Strukturierung und Koordinierung der Zusammenarbeit von Domänenexperten in den ausgewählten Abläufen der Produktentwicklung und andererseits auf der Erweiterung der Abläufe um Energie- und Ressourcenbetrachtungen. Die softwaretechnische Unterstützung der gewählten Abläufe ermöglicht es, die Komplexität der zu entwickelnden Produkte beherrschbar zu machen und den manuellen Aufwand der Domänenexperten in den Abläufen zu verringern.

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

Cette thèse a été réalisée dans le cadre du projet « Gestion et Optimisation de la Chaîne Documentaire », projet labellisé par le Pôle de compétitivité des Industries du Commerce. Le projet a pour but de concevoir et de développer un nouveau workflow et un outil d’aide à la décision. Ce système doit être capable de gérer et d’optimiser le flux complet dématérialisé de contrats reçus à COFIDIS.Nous présentons d’abord le framework retenu dans le cadre du projet pour modéliser et implémenter le workflow. En phase de conception BPMN a été choisi. Pour la partie développement, l’utilisation de BPEL a été préconisée pour implémenter et exécuter l'application finale (services web).Cependant la flexibilité offerte par BPMN peut conduire à des propriétés indésirables du processus telles que blocage et inaccessibilité. De plus, BPMN a été conçu pour fournir des modèles Orientés Process. Les données ou les ressources y sont donc peu représentées. En conséquence, l'analyse de performance sur un modèle BPMN est quasi inexistante.Afin de surmonter ces problèmes nous proposons d’insérer dans le framework deux nouvelles phases. Ces deux phases sont appliquées au modèle BPMN. La première est une phase de vérification et de validation et la deuxième une phase d'optimisation. Ces deux phases sont réalisées en transformant le modèle BPMN vers un langage formel. Notre choix dans ce travail a été d'utiliser les réseaux de Petri. Ce qui nous a permis de vérifier et de valider de bonnes propriétés du process. Quant à l’optimisation, nous avons défini une nouvelle variante du problème d’affectation (bin packing problem) et proposé une résolution à intégrer dans le processus d’aide à la décision / This thesis has been realized as a part of the project GOCD (French acronym for Management and optimization of document life cycle) and within the context of the French competitive cluster PICOM. The project aims to design and develop a new paperless workflow system and decision making tool to replace the current paper based system. The new workflow system must manage and optimize received credit demands at COFIDIS.The first part of this thesis presents and discusses a framework to model and implement workflow systems. The proposed framework allows more flexibility in workflow reengineering process and operational analysis for different business process. The proposed framework uses the most recent and promising language to model and execute workflow the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) and Business Process Execution Language (BPEL).The flexibility offered by BPMN can also lead to undesirable properties for business process such as deadlocks and unreachablity. More, BPMN notation was designed to model business process, and little consideration was concentrated to represent data and resources. As a result, carrying out performance analysis on a BPMN model is also limited.To overcome these problems, we propose two additional phases in the reengineering process. They are applied to the target BPMN model. The first phase is verification and validation and the second one is optimization. These two phases are realized by transforming the BPMN model to a formal language, Petri nets. As for optimization, a new variant of bin packing problem has been defined. And we propose to integrate its resolution in a decision making tool

[pt] Na execução de workflows científicos distribuídos, a principal forma de passar os dados entre os nós de execução do workflow é utilizando arquivos. Quando os arquivos são grandes, uma parte considerável do tempo de execução do workflow é gasto transferindo os arquivos entre o servidor de armazenamento compartilhado e os nós de execução. Este trabalho propõe uma estratégia de transferência de arquivos diretamente entre os nós de execução, antecipando as necessidades da próxima etapa do workflow e diminuindo a sobrecarga com tráfego dos arquivos para os servidores de armazenamento. O trabalho analisa cenários em que a estratégia se mostra vantajosa e em quais não. / [en] For distributed scientific workflows the main method of sharing data between the execution nodes is through files. When those files are large, a substantial portion of the workflow s execution time is spent transferring the files between the storage server and the execution nodes. This work proposes a strategy for transfering the files directly between the execution nodes, antecipating the requirements of the next step of the workflow and lowering the overhead from transfering the files to and of the storage server. This dissertation analises scenarios in which this strategy shows to be advantajous and in which it doesn t.

In this work, an approach based on Deadlock avoidance of Interorganizational Work-Flow nets is proposed to deal with these situations. Interorganizational business processes are modeled by Interorganizational WorkFlow nets. Deadlock situations in interorganizational business processes come generally related to losses during message exchanges between several business processes. Within the Petri net theory, a Deadlock situation is characterized by the presence of a siphon that can be empty. After detecting and controlling the Siphon structures that lead to Deadlock situations in Interorganizational WorkFlow nets, a method for the design of Interorganizational WorkFlow nets free of Deadlock is proposed. In particular, the basic principle is to dene new Work- Flow nets shared among the original work ow processes that allow one to remove the scenarios responsible for the Deadlocks. / Neste trabalho e proposta uma abordagem baseada na prevenção de deadlocks em WorkFlow nets Interorganizacionais para lidar com situações dessa natureza. Processos de negocio interorganizacionais são modelados por work ows interorganizacionais. Situações de deadlock nos processos de negocio interorganizacionais geralmente estão relacionadas a perdas durante trocas de mensagens entre varios processos de negocio. Dentro da teoria das redes de Petri, uma situação de deadlock e caracterizada pela presenca de um sifão que pode car vazio. Depois de detectar e controlar as estruturas de sifão que levam as situações de deadlock nas WorkFlow nets Interorganizacionais, e proposta uma arquitetura distribuda para modelar as WorkFlow nets Interorganizacionais livre de deadlock. Em particular, o princpio basico consiste em denir novas WorkFlow nets compartilhadas entre os work ows originais que permitem remover os cenarios responsaveis pelos deadlocks. / Mestre em Ciência da Computação

Fundação de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de Minas Gerais / The course in distance learning can be customized taking in to account the specific characteristic of each student. This means that the learning environment has adaptativity. So, in order to develop adaptative systems of distance learning, it is necessary to consider the problems: instructional planning and the student model. The first problem allows to generate a specific sequence of content for each student and the second one provides the necessary information to cope with adaptativity. Planning techniques in Artificial Intelligence have been successfully used for determining the sequence of instructional actions. The Workflow technology has been used for the management of these systems. Then, this work presents an adaptative instructional planning and a student model based on Taxonomy of Educational Objectives and learning styles. / Muitos sistemas de educação à distância não levam em consideração características particulares do estudante, utilizam as mesmas estratégias pedagógicas e seqüencias de conteúdo para todos os estudante. No entanto, ambiente de educação à distância devem introduzir adaptatividade como uma das suas principais características. Para que isto seja possível, deve-se considerar os problemas de planejamento instrucional e definição modelo do estudante. O primeiro problema permite gerar uma sequência de conteúdo específica para cada estudante e o segundo problema prove informações necessárias para lidar com adaptatividade. Técnicas de planejamento em Inteligência Artificial têm sido utilizada para determinar a sequência de ações instrucionais. A tecnologia de Workflow têm sido utilizada para gerenciar estes sistemas. Por tanto, este trabalho apresentar um sequenciador de conteúdo adaptativo, que utiliza algoritmos genéticos e um modelo do estudante baseado taxionomia do objetivos educacionais e em estilos de aprendizagem. / Mestre em Ciência da Computação