Selim Erol

From a Social Wiki to a Social Workflow System

This paper presents an approach for using wikis in an organizational context and a proto-type implementation for developing a wiki-based workflow system. We provide general considerations and requirements for changing a wiki’s application context from public to organizational and will describe consequences for wiki architecture and policy management. The presented workflow system is based on an open-source wiki tool and is targeted at collaborative workflow design and activity management.

Auf dem Weg zur Industrie 4.0 – ein dreistufiges Vorgehensmodell

Der europaische Industriesektor steht derzeit vor Herausforderungen, welche vor allem durch die Globalisierung der Markte, demographische Veranderungen sowie durch steigende Kunden- und Qualitatsanspruche und dem damit verbundene Innovationsdruck entstehen. Des Weiteren erfordert die sinkende Verfugbarkeit von Rohstoffen eine Neuausrichtung und Flexibilisierung der Wertschopfungskette. Hierzu mussen alle Elemente entlang der Wertschopfungskette – uber den gesamten Lebenszyklus von der Ideenfindung uber die Produktion, bis zur Distribution – eng integriert und vernetzt werden (Walters und Rainbird 2007).

Handling Concurrent Changes in Collaborative Process Model Development: A Change-Pattern Based Approach

Business process modeling has gained increasing interest with the advent of business process management systems in organizational contexts. As business processes are subject to frequent change also respective models are complex and under continuous development with multiple modelers being involved. This paper presents an approach to integrate concurrent changes of multiple modelers equivalently into a resulting process model. Through change patterns we capture the semantics of changes and use them for recognizing instances hereof from subsequent model revisions. These change patterns were identified by analyzing a set of recurring changes during model creation, modification, and refactoring. Together with the concept of conflict types change patterns are used as a conceptual means to implement a semi-automated merging mechanism within a collaborative wiki-based modeling environment. This approach is expected to facilitate smooth (incremental and iterative) development of models in highly dynamic modeling environments and is a human-oriented way to conflict resolution in (concurrent) process model development.

A Case-Study of Wiki-Supported Collaborative Drafting of Business Processes Models

Redesign of business processes is an activity frequently performed in modern organizations as a response to intrinsic and extrinsic change requirements. The way (methods, techniques, tools) a process is redesigned varies greatly with the process context. In contrast, involving stakeholders of a process in process redesign can be considered a common practice throughout organizations of all kinds. Hence, research and industry have only recently investigated the characteristics of collaboration in process redesign and the challenges that arise for software-support respectively. In this paper we will systematically describe findings from a case-study where we adapted a particular type of collaboration technology - a wiki engine - towards collaborative process modeling support and exposed it to a real-world setting. The case-study shows how a small team of domain experts within a large office supply manufacturing company redesigned a recruiting process by using a wiki as their primary process modeling environment.

Keeping Track of the Physical in Assembly Processes

Assembly processes are a particular class of production processes that have gained increasing importance as to their impact on flexibility and efficiency of the overall process. Assembly processes are characterized by high variability concerning the type and logical flow of tasks to be performed, the devices and tools used, the materials and information to be processed. Due to the complexity of such processes a relatively high ratio of tasks is still performed by human workers. Keeping track of materials, devices and tools used and at the same time providing digital assistance for increasingly complex assembly tasks requires adequate modeling techniques as a prerequisite for respective systems design. In this paper we discuss challenges for modeling assembly processes based on a real-world assembly line from our learning factory lab. Finally, we propose an architecture for a process-driven assistive assembly system which shows the interplay between process based monitoring, task assistance and workplace sensors.

Collaborative Modeling of Manufacturing Processes – a Wiki – Based Approach

Manufacturing companies face substantial challenges due to a new industrial (r)evolution taking place. The increasing digitalization and intelligentization of manufacturing processes will lead to a higher degree of automation and as well autonomy of production systems. Driven by these developments, model-driven approaches gain increasing attention in the domain of manufacturing. Future manufacturing processes will need to be increasingly adaptive to highly individualized customer needs. Therefore, reengineering of such processes must be supported by a platform that facilitates their quick adaption to changing conditions in an unbureaucratic way. In this paper we describe the design of a collaborative process modeling environment that is based on the principles of wiki-engines and enables quick, easy, concurrent and transparent design of manufacturing processes. Finally, we provide lessons learned from a first large-scale evaluation case-study.