مدیریت فرآیند مبتنی بر دانش یک رویکرد با اداره جریان کار انطباقی

In recent years, many organisations have found enterprise modelling, especially business process modelling, to be an effective tool for managing organisational change. The application of business processing modelling has brought benefits to many organisations, but the models developed tend to be used for reference during business operations and re-engineering activities; they rarely play an active role in supporting the day-to-day execution of the processes. While workflow management systems are widely used for the streamlined management of ‘administrative’ business processes, current systems are unable to cope with the more dynamic situations encountered in ad hoc and collaborative processes [1]. A system that supports complex and dynamically changing processes is required. There is increasing interest in making workflow systems more adaptive [8] and [18] and using knowledge-based techniques to provide more flexible process management support than is possible using current workflow systems [4] and [19]. This paper describes the results of a collaborative project between Loughborough University and the University of Edinburgh. ICI and Unilever were industrial partners on the project, providing real business requirements in the application domain. The project investigated the use of ontologies, agents and knowledge based planning techniques to provide support for adaptive workflow or flexible workflow management, especially in the area of new product development within the chemical industries.

Enterprise modelling, especially business process modelling, is an effective tool for managing organisational change. Business processing modelling has brought benefits to many organizations. Organisations and their processes undergo changes from time to time, and in some cases changes are continual. Organisations change either through proactive efforts to become more competitive or in response to a need to maintain competitiveness in a changing environment. Workflow systems are designed to support business processes. These systems embody explicit process models that will need to be modified to reflect the changes in the organisation. A major limitation of workflow systems is that they can, typically, only support simple, predicable processes, but not the dynamically changing and complex processes that are present in many organisations. van der Aalst et al. [23] point out that existing tools that support collaborative work are typically in one of two extremes: unstructured, information centric approaches (CSCW) and structured, process centric ones (product workflow). “Adaptive workflow aims at providing process support like normal workflow systems do, but in such a way that the system is able to deal with certain changes. These changes may range from ad hoc changes such as changing the order of two tasks for an individual case to the redesign of a workflow process …” The Task Based Process Management (TBPM) project aims to support the management of change in business organisations with the help of intelligent task management and coordination technologies. The area of new product development (NPD) within the chemicals industries was chosen as the application focus for generating and testing ideas. The reason is that the NPD process, like many other engineering activities, has characteristics that pose significant challenges for workflow systems: • It is a highly interdisciplinary process, requiring the coordination of individuals from different engineering and business specialities. • Many ad hoc processes occur, which nonetheless are activities requiring a significant amount of time, specific technical and business skills and other resources to perform, thus needing careful management. • The structure of the process is highly flexible, which vary from one project to the next. • The process is information-intensive, where a significant amount of technical information of different types is generated and must be distributed to interested parties reliably and efficiently. These characteristics make conventional workflow systems unsuitable for handling NPD processes ([1], [7] and [11]). However, if such support could be provided, there are potential benefits to be gained by: • providing a single computing framework allowing the planning, execution and monitoring of processes. This ensures that planned processes are followed faithfully and allows the inspection of information about the current status of the process. • permitting flexibility in process modelling and planning, so that process plans may be revised in the light of events and experiences gained during the process. • improving the quality of decision-making because of the effective management of information and its dissemination to interested parties as it becomes available (for example, technical difficulties or discoveries which may have an impact on the business case for the product being developed). Because of these and other related potential advantages, there is increasing interest in making workflow more adaptive [8] and [18] and in using knowledge-based techniques to allow workflow to cope with complex and dynamically changing processes [5] and [19]. The TBPM project extends the application scope of current workflow system by incorporating knowledge about processes in general, and about the domain in which the system is deployed in particular. Such knowledge enables the system to reason about processes within those domains, providing the necessary power and flexibility for computer support. The industrial partners on the project provided the scale-up process within NPD as a test-case application to elucidate the requirements for an intelligent process management support tool from a particular real-world standpoint.

By carrying out an in-depth analysis of the NPD process with the help of industrial input, many requirements for supporting adaptive workflow were identified. To address the requirements, a novel framework was proposed and a prototype was implemented to demonstrate the feasibility of the approach. Although NPD was used as a test case application in this project, it is not the only cross-functional process that could benefit from the TBPM approach. Ongoing design and production involves sales, marketing, purchasing, production, delivery, engineering and maintenance functions, which must all work together and in parallel for the company to be a quick and efficient provider. As competition increases, speed of response and flexibility are becoming more and more important. This is accelerating particularly with the current focus on e-commerce and e-business. This revolution in the way business is done will require ever more flexible processes, which this technology will have great value in enabling. With the increasing tighter legislation on health and safety, certain design and manufacturing processes have to conform to related national and international standards. There is on the one hand, the demand for flexibility and, on the other hand, the need to conform to standards. Therefore, there is the need for support for process compliance checking as well as support for change. A research project at Loughborough University is being carried out to pursue this line of investigation.