Hoontae Kim

Business process choreography for B2B collaboration

We describe a proposed methodology for business process choreography. We focus on two types of business processes (contract and executable) and provide an interface protocol to represent interoperability patterns between them. The approach is designed to let existing processes, usually managed by an enterprises own internal workflow management system, collaborate.

Standards-based approaches to B2B workflow integration

E-business automates the overall activities of a company and allows distributed systems to communicate their information. Process automation and information sharing improve a companys productivity and responsiveness, while Business-to-Business (B2B) workflow systems electronically aid the progress of business processes among trading partners, and also help companies to monitor and administrate their process execution. This study analyzes the technologies and standards for B2B workflow integration, and extracts a reference model for B2B workflow integration. Based on the reference model, three approaches to B2B workflow integration will be introduced here. In addition, we have developed a prototype system of one approach and have illustrated an example for B2B workflow integration. The result of our research can help business partners understand the workflow standards and the messaging technologies for B2B workflow integration, and also help them understand how to implement workflow integration systems that are appropriate to their e-business environments.

Dynamic Business Process Management Based on Process Change Patterns

In order to provide life cycle support of business process management, a framework for managing process improvement and dynamic process changes is required. In this paper, we propose a new approach to managing business process changes in dynamic business environment based on business process change patterns. We identify and categorize business process change patterns that occur recurrently based on workflow patterns. Several issues on managing process versions are discussed and a new version management method for managing process changes more flexibly based on the process change patterns is explained in detail. In order to maximize the flexibility in executing various process versions we propose a mechanism for abstract process execution with runtime encapsulation of a business process in dynamic business environment. In addition, we propose a useful mechanism to support dynamic process version selection with process promotion and demotion to support abstract process execution. This paper contributes to managing various business process changes efficiently and enhances the flexibility of BPM system.

Design and implementation of a personalized business activity monitoring system

Todays collaborative working environment requires real-time control and monitoring of business processes which involve participants with different roles and responsibilities. Therefore, a Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) system should provide personalized monitoring capabilities. The purpose of this paper is to develop a personalized BAM system. We have identified functional requirements of the system and then develop a system design. Implementation of the design is also provided on top of a commercial BAM solution.

Dynamic execution planning for reliable collaborative business processes

Collaborative business processes, implemented and carried out via web services and enabling dynamic interaction among organizations, are becoming more indispensable to competitiveness in the global market. As dynamic collaboration prevails, the quality of service (QoS) of collaborative processes becomes more important. A critical requirement in cases where processes involve long-term activities is to guarantee successful completion within time constraints. In this study, we developed a methodology for dynamic planning of web service execution that imparts reliability to collaborative business processes. In order to ensure that processes successfully execute within time constraints and at minimum cost, the proposed method dynamically modifies execution plans at run-time by means of fault-tolerance techniques. Since generation of an execution plan of minimum cost while guaranteeing successful completion is classified as an NP-hard problem, a heuristic algorithm was developed. Additionally, to compare the proposed algorithms performance with those of the branch-and-bound method and the genetic algorithm (GA), a set of experiments was conducted.

Integrated process modeling for dynamic b2b collaboration

This paper proposes an integrated process modeling methodology for dynamic B2B collaboration. The methodology enables a process architect to effectively design an integrated process in dynamic collaboration environments. An integrated process is composed of internal workflow processes and automated processes, and external collaborative processes with web service interfaces. An integrated process is designed with BPMN, divided into the three types of processes, and automatically transformed to XPDL and BPEL for process enactment. Specifically, collaborative processes are mapped to corresponding actual partners through virtual partners. The concept of virtual partners enables effective maintenance of collaborative processes and flexible exchange of trading partners for B2B process integration in dynamic collaboration environments.

Model-Driven Approach to Workflow Execution

Workflow execution is usually accomplished by a central enactment engine that interprets a process definition and dispatches activities as specified in the definition. In practice, this type of workflow execution is successfully automated for such processes that involve routine activities. However, today’s business processes don’t seem to be manageable, compared to the traditional workflows. Particularly, with explosion of e-business, the processes sometimes span multiple companies, and interoperability among distributed process-centric systems has become an important issue. Therefore, the conventional execution framework may not effectively handle the complicated business processes for collaboration any more. In this article, we deliberate on realizing the vision of Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) for workflow systems and make an effort to build up a concrete process model reflecting on whole life cycle of workflow processes. The process model will improve interchangeability and portability of workflow processes, which requires that the executable components be generated from the model regardless of the variety of run-time architecture.

A modeling framework of business transactions for enterprise integration

A modeling framework and an integration platform for unifying B2Bi (Business to Business integration) and EAI (Enterprise Application Integration) systems are required to effectively manage collaborative B2B business processes. In this research, we suggest a modeling framework for enterprise integration. The suggested framework includes various activity controllers derived from several business process modeling standards. An extension mechanism is included in the suggested framework for incorporating future changes in those standards or systems operational requirements. The modeling framework has been implemented as a real business integration platform and runs successfully in production systems to execute enterprise B2B collaborations.

Time Value of Information: A New Approach to Measuring the Visibility of RFID Systems

RFID technologies are conceived as an enabler of the innovation of the next generation logistics, which have high potentials and possibilities. The RFID technologies have already been implemented in a variety of business areas. More and more companies that want to renovate their business processes are paying attention to the technologies. However, there are ongoing issues on the return on investment (ROI) of RFID implementations in many business areas. Existing methodologies for the ROI analysis of RFID technologies have limitations in quantitatively evaluating the impact of the RFID implementation on business processes. As many experts expect, RFID will be adopted by many organizations in a variety of business domains. Therefore, a new method for quantitatively measuring the effects of RFID implementation is urgently needed to promote RFID adoptions. In this paper, we suggest a new analysis method based on the concept that the potential value of information is affected by time. In addition, as an application of the new analysis method, we present a scheme for quantitatively measuring the visibility of RFID systems using the time value concept of information. Hopefully, the time value concept of information proposed in this paper could be extended as one of general quantitative analysis models for measuring the utilization value of information systems in the future.

A hybrid prediction model for monitoring of river water quality in the USN system

River water quality is directly related to the wellness of its neighbors. Because the West Nakdong River has long suffered both from the infiltration of sea water and from the inflow of turbid wastewater, inconsiderate use of this water can cause disastrous result to nearby agricultural areas and neighbors. Busan city in Korea had deployed a pilot USN (ubiquitous sensor network) system that monitors this river and nearby tube wells to properly react to those situations. In this paper, we have designed a system that predicts salinity level of groundwater while monitoring the electrical conductivity (EC) values of sensors in that USN. We use a hybrid method that combines pattern-based approach together with statistical regression model to analyze sensor data. After classifying past sensor outputs into several characteristic patterns, we trace each days change to identify base pattern of that day and thus predict the next value of sensor output. Since the detection of each days pattern takes some time, we need to incorporate statistical regression model as an interim prediction method. Through an experiment that compares the hybrid model to previous statistical regression model, we have shown that our hybrid model is more accurate to predict the sensors movement.