Research On The Key Issues Of Customized Business Process

Process-centric BPM,by optimizing the organizational structure,flexible process design,customer-oriented rather than manager's horizontal process management system,improves enterprise operational efficiency,optimizes resources utilization and collaborative relationships between members,thereby reduces business operating costs,and improves business responsiveness to customer needs for the maximization of corporate profits.Traditional software system is facing relatively stable business processes.For the new features of business process model,a large number of researchers in recent years, endeavor for varieties in demand of the process flexibility,specifically the following areas:Representation of the business process varieties in requirement models is not enough,or rather lack of intuition.Current software analysis models often describe the static demands,but not analyze and define varieties in business process explicitly. And therefore it is difficult to build software systems to support business process changes,requirements analysis method needs to be done adaptively.The model of software system,from analysis to design and implementation,are more concerned about the data,a function description.While the dependence, relevance,constraint between functions which reflects the "process" attributes,the software model is not well highlighted.Processes logic was implicit in the application implementation,and it is difficult to separate it from the implementation logic. Developed BPMS must be re-analyzed,designed,and implemented when BP changes. This will not cope with the rapidly changing market environment,but also greatly increased the cost of the enterprise.The BPMS development modes face new challenges.BPMS's object is generally within the enterprise employees,and as customer-centric management philosophy rises,the new BP model came into being,it is faced with a wide range of customers-customize a service business process for a customer.Internet's popularity has also contributed to the new BPM patterns:on the one hand customers want to use the Internet to complete the task,applications rely on the Internet;the other hand,the emergence of Web Service technology can make complex tasks easier to complete on the Internet,provides a great convenience on agile BPR,so that customer-oriented service are easy to realize.Compared with employee-oriented BPM,customer-oriented BPM has the following new features:First,business processes within the enterprise is relatively mature,demand is clear,and thus flow is also relatively stable,and in advance by business experts designing a processes for business needs is more reasonable.But customers are in large number with different personality,different levels,often put forward the request of customized service.So the uniform business processes are unable to meet their requirements,BPM must be more easy to customize and agilely restructure.Second,the main performer of business process tasks has changed.The traditional BPM techniques,tasks usually have been done by program units or the enterprise application software.In the Internet environment,actors have been extended to the Web Service.Virtual Enterprise business model spawned a virtual enterprise technology.People raise requirements according to their production,work and life needs of the product (tangible and intangible).Companies face the ever-changing market,and the development must have a high degree of flexibility and rapid response capability.To this end,the modern enterprises to simplify the organizational structure,flat direction, produced a can of knowledge,technology,capital,raw materials,markets and management of the combined resources of the Virtual Enterprise.Virtual Enterprise product is the greatest manifestation of customization,so business processes running in a Virtual Enterprise will be presented with personalized product.Its life cycle may simply serve only one product and run in one time.Virtual Enterprise technology for customized business process provides the technical foundation environment.Based on the above four aspects can be seen in the customer first service philosophy,business process construction mode requires constant innovation,BPM software technology should also be adaptable.To keep ahead in strong competition environments,BPMS should be flexible to support the customization and reengineering of business processes so as to provide flexible services to customers. Achieving such goals requires that the dependences and restrictions between business functions should be taken into account when analyzing,designing and developing BPMS.An individual business process requirements,often is satisfied on an adaptation of general business processes,therefore,only the agile of business processes software model can cope with on-demand process requirements.This dissertation studies the problem of customer-oriented business process reengineering and management.Aiming at flexibly customized business process,a comprehensive solution is proposed that includes the requirements analysis model,a series of algorithms on process reuse and adjustment,and system framework.The main contributions are summarized as follow:1.We analyze the character of variability of BPs and introduce the notion of business rules to describe semantic dependencies between element activities of a BP that should be obliged in process customization and adjustment.Business rules can be acquired by analyzing previous business process or expert experiences as well as by defining strict constrains according to practical requirements.2.The requirements analysis model and software development model are proposed to support customization and management of business process.To support the implementation of flexible business process,function activities that accomplish real works and their logic links are separated such that the logic connection between activities can be changed with link type.We present the formal definitions of these models based on Process Algebra,describe each element in detail,and carry out model validity checking.3.The variety characters of BP are classified and the corresponding adjustment algorithms are designed.4.We investigate the methodology and technology of reusing a successful business process.A Case-Based Reason algorithm is proposed that can well benefit from previous successful case and distinctly improve the efficiency of BP modeling. 5.Based on SOA,system architecture is proposed to support the management of customized BP.A Web Service based prototype system,named Intelligent Platform of Virtual Travel Agency(IPVita),is developed where above models and algorithms are integrated together.Some practical instances are carried out on the platform and work well.