Biqing Huang

A framework for virtual enterprise operation management

This paper presents researches on operation management for virtual enterprises (VEs). A virtual enterprise is a temporary alliance of member enterprises (MEs) formed to exploit fast-changing opportunities. During the operation of a virtual enterprise, its constituent member enterprises, which are geographically distributed and organizationally independent, collaborate with each other to execute the whole business process (BP) of the virtual enterprise. With the aim of addressing business integration for virtual enterprises, this paper develops a framework for virtual enterprise operation management. From the viewpoint of business processes, carried out is integral research on business process modeling, analyzing, and managing for virtual enterprises. Both the distributed business process model and the model of the virtual enterprise itself are established. The former provides the functional basis of the virtual enterprise operation, while the latter provides its structural basis. Further, the two models are integrated through the loading from the distributed business process model to the virtual enterprise model. Through such model separation and integration, business process management for virtual enterprises is enacted and business integration for virtual enterprises is achieved.

A chaos control optimal algorithm for QoS-based service composition selection in cloud manufacturing system

This article investigates the problem of cloud service composition optimal-selection (CSCOS) in cloud manufacturing (CMfg). The categories of cloud services and their QoS (quality of service) indexes are established. From the perspective of QoS indexes, the relationship among QoS key factors for different kinds of cloud services are analysed and elaborated, and the corresponding objective functions and constraints of CSCOS are proposed. A new chaos control optimal algorithm (CCOA) is designed to address the CSCOS problem, and the simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can search better solutions with less time-consumption than widely used algorithms such as genetic algorithm (GA) and typical chaotic genetic algorithm (CGA).

The decision optimization model of 4PL

With the Increased competition in the transport market, the new international logistics service provider must develop solutions tailored to meet the unique and special needs of each customer. Building upon the foundation of 3rd party outsourcing, 4PL emerges and acts as an electronic intermediator that connects suppliers, producers, carriers and customers to dynamic supply chain networks. Of such transportation networks the operative planning task of the hub-and-spoke network is a challenging task for the management. In particular, the transport management has to decide where all quantifies within the transportation network flow over the hub from or to the depots, or whether a hybrid hub-and-spoke network is preferred in which direct transports also take place. Upon these, Optimization model is studied and a 4PL optimization system for these operative planning tasks is developed and applied to a real case of a Chinese logistic service provider. The result of the case indicates that the model and algorithm presented in the paper can provide a reasonable supply chain scheduling scheme.

Petri-net-based business process modeling for virtual enterprises

The paper presents our studies on Petri net based business process modeling for virtual enterprises. A virtual enterprise (VE) is a temporary alliance of member enterprises. Generally, a business process consists of a series of logically interrelated activities, to which appropriate resources will be assigned. In the virtual enterprise, both the activities and the resources are in multiple member enterprises, while collaborations exist among these distributed activities and resource sharing is often required. Thus, the modeling of business processes in virtual enterprises is challenging work. Based on Petri nets, the paper proposes a business process modeling method for virtual enterprises, which focuses on the two basic elements of the business process: activities and resources, while addressing their properties of distribution and collaboration particular to virtual enterprises.

Agent-based virtual enterprise modeling and operation control

We propose an agent-based virtual enterprise model and provide the agent collaboration mechanisms under the model, thereby achieving agent-based virtual enterprise modeling and operation control. We establish a network of distributed activity agents and resource agents for each member enterprise, collaborations among which can deal with activity precedence arrangements and activity-resource assignments in each sub-business-process. Then, we model each member enterprise in the virtual enterprise as an agent. Collaborations among member enterprise agents can deal with activity coordination and resource sharing among various sub-business-processes. Thus, our agent-based approach achieves distributed control over the whole business process execution of the virtual enterprise.

An agent-based approach for workflow management

The authors propose an agent based approach for workflow management, aiming at achieving flexible and dynamic workflow management in the distributed environment. We treat agents as autonomous entities with abilities to solve problems independently and propose an agent hierarchy as well as an agent model. The agent hierarchy consists of three kinds of agents at three neighboring levels: activity agents, role agents and actor agents. With our agent hierarchy, the gap between the dynamic workflow enactment and the static business process model can be bridged. The three levels of agents collaborate with each other through the contract-net approach and the feedback mechanism. Through such collaboration, activity-actor assignments can be achieved flexibly and dynamically; and the workflow execution can be monitored and managed in a real time fashion. The agent model consists of three sub-agents: a message-receiving one, a decision-making one and a message-sending one. Connected by two message queues, these three collaboratively operating sub-agents can complete functions of an agent effectively. Through message transfers of the message-receiving/sending sub-agents and the message based behavior-performing of the decision-making subagent, individual agents as well as the agent hierarchy can operate effectively and efficiently.

Service-selecting approach based on domain-specified 'Quality of Service' model and its application in logistics

With the rapid growth of modern service economics and the popular adoption of web services, more and more service industries are beginning to deliver services with web service technology. One of the key issues is how the service consumer should search for services within the plentiful service repositories, and especially select a suitable and optimal service from candidates with similar features. However, most of the researches on service selection focus on the general criteria of web service, but ignore the domain-specified needs. This paper proposes a domain-specified quality of service model and an analytic hierarchy process-based service-selecting approach by integrating hierarchical clustering algorithms and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation methods. An application in logistics is given to validate the effectiveness of this approach.

Customer-Centered Careflow Modeling Based on Guidelines

In contemporary society, customer-centered health care, which stresses customer participation and long-term tailored care, is inevitably becoming a trend. Compared with the hospital or physician-centered healthcare process, the customer-centered healthcare process requires more knowledge and modeling such a process is extremely complex. Thus, building a care process model for a special customer is cost prohibitive. In addition, during the execution of a care process model, the information system should have flexibility to modify the model so that it adapts to changes in the healthcare process. Therefore, supporting the process in a flexible, cost-effective way is a key challenge for information technology. To meet this challenge, first, we analyze various kinds of knowledge used in process modeling, illustrate their characteristics, and detail their roles and effects in careflow modeling. Secondly, we propose a methodology to manage a lifecycle of the healthcare process modeling, with which models could be built gradually with convenience and efficiency. In this lifecycle, different levels of process models are established based on the kinds of knowledge involved, and the diffusion strategy of these process models is designed. Thirdly, architecture and prototype of the system supporting the process modeling and its lifecycle are given. This careflow system also considers the compatibility of legacy systems and authority problems. Finally, an example is provided to demonstrate implementation of the careflow system.

Web Services' Semantic Annotation and Auto-Matching Based on SAWSDL

With the latest semantic annotation specification SAWSDL provided by W3C, web service components were annotated, and annotation process and method were discussed in detail. At the same time, a framework for web services matching and composition was present and its prototype was developed. Service matching algorithms, which were integrated in a service template, were stressed from aspects of function matching, I/O parameters matching and quality of service matching. Finally, the auto-matching of web services was implemented in this paper. The research result reveals that the method that use SAWSDL to implement semantic annotation and service matching is easy and flexible, which is a good approach to achieve semantic web services modeling and services composition.

Modeling distributed business processes of virtual enterprises based on the object-oriented approach and Petri nets

Based on the object-oriented approach and Interval Timed Coloured Petri nets (ITCPNs), we study the modeling of distributed business processes in virtual enterprises. We model each member enterprise in a virtual enterprise as an object, and define both the internal model of the member enterprise object and the interaction model among the member enterprise objects based on ITCPNs. These two kinds of models are two views of the system and when combined, a complete model for the whole business process of the virtual enterprise is achieved.