321 research outputs found
Combining artifact-driven monitoring with blockchain: Analysis and solutions
No full textThe adoption of blockchain to enable a trusted monitoring of multi-party business processes is recently gaining a lot of attention, as the absence of a central authority increases the efficiency and the effectiveness of the delivery of monitoring data. At the same time, artifact-driven monitoring has been proposed to create a flexible monitoring platform for multi-party business processes involving an exchange of goods (e.g., in the logistics domain), where the information delivery does not require a central authority but it lacks of sufficient level of trust. The goal of this paper is to analyze the dependencies among these two areas of interests, and to propose two possible monitoring platforms that exploit blockchain to achieve a trusted artifact-driven monitoring solution
Artifact-Driven Monitoring for Human-Centric Business Processes with Smart Devices: Assessment and Improvement
No full textMonitoring human-centric business processes requires human operators to manually notify to a BPMS when activities start or end. Even if nowadays smart devices, like smartphones and tablets, are adopted to make the transmission of these notifications easier, such devices usually hold a passive role, being a simple mediator between the BPMS and human operators.
In this paper, we adopt the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm by envisioning an artifact-driven process monitoring where all the objects interacting with a business process instance can be coupled with a smart device to actively detect when process activities start or end. To support the artifact-driven monitoring, we propose an ontology-based approach to assess and improve the monitorability of a process model
Using the guard-stage-milestone notation for monitoring BPMN-based processes
No full textBusiness processes are usually designed by means of imperative languages to model the acceptable execution of the activities performed within a system or an organization. At the same time, declarative languages are better suited to check the conformance of the states and transitions of the modeled process with respect to its actual execution. To avoid defining models twice from scratch to cope with both the process enactment and its monitoring, this paper proposes an approach for translating BPMN process models to E-GSM ones: an extension of the Guard-Stage-Milestone artifact-centric notation. The paper also shows how a monitoring engine based on E-GSM specifications can detect anomalies during the execution of the process and classify them according to different levels of severity, that is, with respect to the impact on the outcome of the process
Multi-party business process compliance monitoring through IoT-enabled artifacts
No full textMonitoring the compliance of the execution of multi-party business processes is a complex and challenging task: each actor only has the visibility of the portion of the process under its direct control, and the physical objects that belong to a party are often manipulated by other parties. Because of that, there is no guarantee that the process will be executed â and the objects be manipulated â as previously agreed by the parties. The problem is usually addressed through a centralized monitoring entity that collects information, sent by the involved parties, on when activities are executed and the artifacts are altered. This paper aims to tackle the problem in a different and innovative way: it proposes a decentralized solution based on the switch from control- to artifact-based monitoring, where the physical objects can monitor their own conditions and the activities in which they participate. To do so, the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm is exploited by equipping physical objects with sensing hardware and software, turning them into smart objects. To instruct these smart objects, an approach to translate classical Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) process models into a set of artifact-centric process models, rendered in Extended-GSM (E-GSM) (our extension of the Guard-Stage-Milestone (GSM) notation), is proposed. The paper presents the approach, based on model-based transformation, demonstrates its soundness and correctness, and introduces a prototype monitoring platform to assess and experiment the proposed solution. A simple case study in the domain of advanced logistics is used throughout the paper to exemplify the different parts of the proposal
Retrieving Sensors Data in Smart Buildings Through Services: A Similarity Algorithm
No full textThis paper proposes a semantic-based retrieval algorithm that allows the pervasive service system to find services able to return data about specific physical phenomenon (e.g. temperature, humidity), in a given location, with particular timeliness. This retrieval algorithm can be used to increase the capabilities of a self-managing pervasive systems, with specific focus on smart buildings, by providing a flexible solution to find sensors similar to a one that failed, or to find sensor data able to control actuators
On the adoption of blockchain for business process monitoring
No full textBeing the blockchain and distributed ledger technologies particularly suitable to create trusted environments where participants do not trust each other, business process management represents a proper setting in which these technologies can be adopted. In this direction, current research work primarily focuses on blockchain-oriented business process design, or on execution engines able to enact processes through smart contracts. Conversely, less attention has been paid to study if and how blockchains can be beneficial to business process monitoring. This work aims to fill this gap by (1) providing a reference architecture for enabling the adoption of blockchain technologies in business process monitoring solutions, (2) defining a set of relevant research challenges derived from this adoption, and (3) discussing the current approaches to address the aforementioned challenges
A GSM-based approach for monitoring cross-organization business processes using smart objects
No full textThe execution of cross-organization business processes often implies the exchange of physical goods without necessarily changing the ownership of such goods. Typical examples are logistic processes where goods are managed by shipping companies that are not the owner of the goods. To ensure that these goods are properly handled, while the service is executed, a monitoring system needs to be put in place.
The goal of this paper is to propose a novel approach for monitoring physical goods while executing cross-organization business processes. The approach envisions the usage of Smart Objects attached to the physical goods, or to their containers. To this aim, an extension of the Guard-Stage-Milestone framework is proposed to allow the Smart Objects to monitor the process execution and take into account the limitations of their power and computational resources
Business process monitoring on blockchains: Potentials and challenges
No full textThe ability to enable a tamper-proof distribution of immutable data has boosted the studies around the adoption of blockchains also in Business Process Management. In this direction, current research work primarily focuses on blockchain-based business process design, or on execution engines able to enact processes through smart contracts. Although very relevant, less studies have been devoted so far on how the adoption of blockchains can be beneficial to business process monitoring. This work goes into this direction by providing an insightful analysis to understand the benefits as well as the hurdles of blockchain-enabled business process monitoring. In particular, this work considers the adoption of programmable blockchain platforms to manage the generation, distribution, and analysis of business process monitoring data
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