Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) are miniaturized devices with high functionality. In recent years, MEMS products have become increasingly dominant in every aspect of the commercial market place. As the MEMS technology is in its infant stage and has several unique features compared to macro-scale products, it is faced with several challenges. One of them is that design and fabrication knowledge is very intrigue and thus very difficult to be accessible. An effective computer support to the MEMS product development is thus very important. This thesis study undertakes a thorough investigation into the MEMS product development process and its computer support. Specifically, the study examines the state-of-the-art in computer aided design systems in light of the support of product functionality. It is shown that MEMS product development involves high degree of uncertainty, which calls for an unconventional computer support. At this point, this study proposes an approach to construct a knowledge base in a fairly flexible and real-time manner. This approach is based on the extended function-behavior-structure framework and the template technique proposed in this thesis. The other finding is that the MEMS product development resembles the one-of-a-kind product (OKP) development. Therefore software tools for the OKP product development process can be applied to the MEMS product development process. These tools are examined, and further extensions upon them are proposed. Throughout the thesis, a microdispensing system is used as an example for illustration of concepts described in this thesis.

Facing the increasing global competition, modern business organizations have to respond quickly and correctly to the constant changing environment to ensure their competitive advantages. This goal has led to a recent surge of work on Business Process Reengineering (BPR) and Workflow Management. While most work in these areas assume that process definitions are known in a priori, it is widely recognized that defining a process type which totally represents all properties of the underlying business process is a difficult job. This job is currently practiced in a very ad-hoc fashion. In this paper, we postulate an algorithm to discover the process definition from analyzing the existing process instances. We compare our algorithm with other existing algorithms proposed in the literature in terms of time complexity and apply these algorithms through synthetic data sets to measure the qualities of output results. It has been found that our algorithm is able to return the process definitions closer to the real ones in a faster manner.

<p>Nowadays, with the rapid development of Information technology, workflow management technology has undoubtedly become the basic component of enterprise information system construction, the research and application level regarding workflow management technology directly determine the level of enterprise information system. By virtue of using workflow management system within enterprises, could advance the operating efficiency of business processes and enhance enterprise competition ability.</p><p>This paper describes the origin and status of workflow management, analyses on the base of the workflow reference model of Workflow Management Coalition; discusses the overall requirements of workflow management system, especially for large-scale enterprises, which includes workflow engines, process design tools, administration and monitoring tools, and client tools thesis four essential components; as well as studies on the workflow modeling techniques and adopts the method based on UML activity diagram to achieve modeling. Along with proposes a design and realization method concerning how to construct a workflow management structure, which utilizes J2EE lightweight workflow engine to meet changeful business processes and diverse deployment environments.</p>

No description available.

Univ., Diss.--Bamberg,, 2003.

This paper gives an overview of workflow management systems (WfMSs) and their security requirements with focus on access mechanisms. It is a descriptive paper in which we examine the state of the art of workflow systems, describe what security risks affect WfMSs in particular, and how these can be diminiuished. WfMSs manage, illustrate and support business processes. They contribute to the performance, automation and optimization of processes, which is important in the global economy today. The security of process flows is important, since the sensitive business data need to be protected to inhibit illegal activities, such as blackmailing, imitation and fraud and to provide for good customer service. This paper focuses on access mechanisms, because they are basic security mechanisms used by WfMSs assuring that only authorized users are provided access to data and resources. Also because of the unsecurity of the Internet, which is commonly used as infrastructure of Workflow systems, additional security mechanisms, such as PKIs, digital signatures and SSL have to be used to provide secure workflows. Depending on the particular requirements in workflow systems, different extensional access control (AC) mechanisms have been developed to maintain security. But when it comes to commercially used WfMSs, the availability of the system is of utmost importance. It is the prerequisite for the system to be employed by companies. The problem is that there is always a trade-off between availability of the system and security. Because this trade off is generally solved in favor of availability, a major part of the developed AC mechanisms are not used in commercially used WfMS. After the first part of this paper which is rather theoretical, we examine a commercial WfMS, namely IBM's MQ Workflow , and its security mechanisms. We show vulnerabilities of the system that could be abused by attackers. Afterwards, we show which security mechanisms, in particular, AC mechanisms are provided to secure against threats. We conclude with a summary, which highlights the difference between security concepts developed in the research area and those really implemented by the commercially used WfMS.

The thesis is focused on workflow processes and systems for their design and management. It tries to show readers more familiar way with the nature of these systems and features that should support. It tries to accomplish three goals. The first goal is to determine the criteria by which you can judge the quality of workflow management system. These criteria must be sorted by the importance of specific situations, which are designed weighting of the criteria and technique for their calculation. The second goal of this work is the selection of appropriate tools for testing and subsequent practical test, focusing on appointment criteria and metrics selected for their assessment. The third goal is the inclusion of a practical example of a real process design modifications to make it suitable for using of workflow system to increase its effectiveness. Selected process is the transfer of information between school studies and legal guardians of students by e-mail, prepared for Secondary school, Dubno. The thesis is splitted in two halves for achieving the objectives of the work.The first two chapters are about the theoretical introduce, what benefits can bring the use of workflow systems and what steps to take to be able to effectively and meaningfully utilized. These informations were used from the literature focused primarily on workflow and process management. The third chapter focuses on the practical part, where the selected studies focused on the evaluation criteria workflow systems, build a suitable combination of the current set of criteria and application to selected systems management workflow. In the last chapter of the thesis are processed informations obtained from employees of SOS and SOU Dubno and where is described the current state of that process, a proposal how to make it more effective with using workflow system. Contribution of this thesis is the first assess of the current state workflow on the market and, secondly, the possibility of its use to increase the efficiency of the administrative process SOS and SOU Dubno.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Reproducible computing and research are of great importance for scientific investigation in any discipline. This thesis presents a general approach to provenance in the context of workflows for widely used script languages. Our solution is based on system integration, and is demonstrated by integrating MATLAB with VisTrails, an open source scientific workflow system. The integrated VisTrails-MATLAB system supports reproducible computing with truly prospective and retrospective provenance at multiple granularity levels as scientists choose for their scripts, and at the same time, is very easy to use.

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) systems are used by thousands of engineering companies world wide. Improving these systems will have a drastic and global effect. One possible improvement is to integrate synchronous collaborative applications with PLM systems. These applications allow multiple people to work on a single digital object simultaneously. They have already been shown to reduce the time a task requires. Using these applications to complete a project will reduce the project time. However, simply including synchronous collaborative applications within a PLM system ignores powerful benefits that could provide further time-saving benefits. The integration must allow improved awareness at the project level, so that users can mediate their own actions.This thesis presents a method for such an integration. It also presents a prototype which implements that method. Testing was carried out using this prototype. As hypothesized, including synchronous collaborative applications shortened the overall project time. In addition, providing awareness information and allowing users to mediate themselves further shortened project times and reduced variation in those times. Proper integration should therefore provide awareness at the project level and allow users to mediate themselves to some extent.

Flexibility and Interoperability have become important characteristics for organisations and their business processes. The need to control flexible business processes within an organisation’s boundaries and between organisations imposes major requirements on a company’s process control capabilities. Workflow Management Systems (WFMS) try to fulfil these requirements by offering respective product features. Evidence suggests that the achievement of flexible business processes and an inter-organisational process control is also influenced by implementation processes for Workflow Management Applications (WFMA). [A WFMA comprises the WFMS and "all WFMS specific data with regard to one or more business processes" [VER01]]. The impact of a WFMA implementation methodology on the fulfilment of these requirements is the research scope of the project. The thesis provides knowledge in the following areas: 1. Review of the relationship between workflow management and the claim for process flexibility respectively -interoperability. 2. Definition of a research-/evaluation framework for workflow projects. This framework is composed of all relevant research variables that have been identified for the thesis. 3. Empirical survey of relevant workflow-project objectives and their priority in the context of process flexibility and –interoperability. 4. Empirical survey of the objectives’ achievement. 5. Empirical survey of methodologies / activities that have been applied within workflow projects. 6. Derivation of the project methodologies’ effectiveness in terms of the impact that applied activities had on project objectives. 7. Evaluation of existing workflow life-cycle models in accordance with the research framework. 8. Identification of basic improvements for workflow implementation processes with respect to the achievement of flexible and interoperable business processes. The first part of the thesis argues the relevance of the subject. Afterwards research variables that constitute the evaluation framework for WFMA implementation processes are stepwise identified and defined. An empirical study then proves the variables’ effectiveness for the achievement of process flexibility and –interoperability within the WFMA implementation process. After this the framework is applied to evaluate chosen WFMA implementation methodologies. Identified weaknesses and effective methodological aspects are utilised to develop generic methodological improvements. These improvements are later validated by means of a case study and interviews with workflow experts.