Investigação em Workflow

A informação contida nesta página teve como fonte a 'WorkFlow Software'

• Alabama Industrial Development Training, Business Process Reengineering and Technology Integration (BPRTI) - An AIDT program designed to assist industry in the application of knowledge to products, processes, tools, and management.
• Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, Informatics Department (Computer Science), Arbeitsgruppe Informationssysteme studies active databases, workflow modelling, mobile workflows, etc...
• The Center for the New Engineer (CNE): Workflow Module Home Page - A tutorial on the domain of workflow. This site has also some workflow related publications.
• The University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Uk also has its workflow research. It is under consideration by the OMG Business Object Domain Task Force as Workflow Management Facility.
• The New University of Lisbon - Working with workflow concepts to implement coordination and configuration within a computational infrastructure to support a Virtual Enterprise Environment, in an European Research project called PRODNET-II.
• ETH (Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology), Institut for Information Systems, Database Research Group, Zuerich, Switzerland: TRAMS: Active Transactional Workflows is a project that aims to build a full-scale workflow management system using active database technology and provide features not available on current commercial systems. The main issues the project will address are: overall architectural design capable of supporting advanced features; storage systems adequate to the characteristics of workflow related data (such as specifications, task descriptions, and descriptions of processing entities); monitoring and analysis of operational workflows; dynamic modification of workflow specifications; version and consistency control; and concurrency control and recovery. See also TRAMS homepage at University of Zurich.
• Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU), Institut für Mathematische Maschinen und Datenverarbeitung (IMMD), Erlangen, Germany: Workflow Management and the MOBILE project - Some workflow related online papers (e.g. one on object-based architecture of the ABS workflow management system).
• Fujitsu Limited, Fujitsu Open Systems Solutions, Inc. Using experience gained in groupware and coordination technology, the Regatta project has developed technology specifically to support the capture, automation, and improvement of processes, while treating people as human beings with control over their own work. By making it possible for users to improve their processes on a daily basis, at an individual or corporate level, Regatta makes a true learning organization possible. Online papers available.
• GMD (German National Research Center for Information Technology):
  • Institute for Applied Information Technology, CSCW Research Group has the following projects among the others:
    • POLITeam is a system which will support the cooperation of German ministeries distributed between Bonn and Berlin. It is built around two metaphors: common desk and circulation folder.
    • EuroCoOp, EuroCODE - an ESPRIT project - realizes the idea of shared to-do-lists - a new paradigm for supporting co-operation within informal working groups. Finished.
    • COMIC is a multi-disciplinary Esprit Basic Research project that investigates the integration of organisational context and notifications of interaction into CSCW systems. Finished.
    • BSCW, Basic Support for Cooperative Work is an extension of World Wide Web which provides a set of basic facilities to support information sharing and activity awareness in a working group across the Internet.
  • Institute for Integrated Publication and Information Systems (IPSI)
    • VORTEL - Teleservice for Workflow Management aims at the development of a generic platform for workflow management as a teleservice including access to archives and multimedia workflow annotations. Finished.
• GTE Laboratories addresses interconnectivity and interoperability of heterogeneous, autonomous, and distributed (HAD) computing resources (which may be legacy systems) through the development of the distributed object management technology. Significant work is also done on the area of the specification and implementation of correct, reliable workflows.
• IBM, Almaden Research Center: Exotica project is focused on workflow systems and advanced transaction management. The goals of the project are to bring together industrial trends and research issues in these areas. So far, work in Exotica has been done in the context of IBM's workflow product FlowMark and IBM's messaging and queueing product MQSeries. More recently, the project has started exploring how to establish more synergy between Lotus Notes and FlowMark. Online publications available.
• Johannes Kepler Universität Linz, Department of Information Systems:
  • HyTime Architectural Forms for Workflow Processing - HyTime is an international standard for the exchange of time-dependent, structured information. This WWW-document presents the HyTime architectural forms which can be used for workflow modeling. Furthermore, parts of a prototypical implementation which prove the usability of the approach by a running system are presented.
  • Trigs_flow - A workflow prototype based on an active object-oriented data model, named TriGS (Triggersystem for GemStone).

Online papers available on both subjects.

• Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), The Center for Coordination Science (CCS) - has projects in the areas of coordination technology, organizational structures and information technology, and coordination theory. Online publications available.
• Metaworld Enterprises Inc: Enterprise Integration and Modeling - This home page describes an on-going international research effort through government and industrial sponsorship on developing new information technologies for distributed and global enterprises. Available to the users here are: a free CASE tool suite for integrated data and knowledge systems development, brief bio-sketches of the researchers, and their publications.
• Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC): Collaboration Management Infrastructure - The vision of the CMI project is to improve the ability of real and virtual organizations to rapidly respond to continuous change and new opportunities by using collaborative process technologies for management of collaboration among people and software systems in large-scale, heterogeneous, ubiquitous and nomadic computing environments. CROSSFLOW: Enterprise Process Coordination - CrossFlow will develop and deploy new technologies for managing, documenting, automating, and (where necessary) reengineering business processes and workflows, enabling organizations to be more efficient and agile. It will focus on the problems of systematically coordinating small process models, resulting in coherent business operations. The Carnot project addresses the problem of logically unifying physically distributed, enterprise wide, heterogeneous information. The relaxed transaction processing of the Carnot solution based on enforcing intertask dependencies support workflows.
• Norges teknisk-naturvetenskapelige universitet (Trondheim): PAKT program (Program on Applied Coordination Technology) - A five-year research program focusing on coordination technology. The approach in this program is cross-disciplinary; combining expertice from computer science, engineering disciplines and sociology to create a new brand of knowledge on coordination phenomena and novel solutions based on a synergy of organization and technology. Closed in the end of year 1997.
• Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg, Wirtschaftsinformatik:
  • Projekt NeSy - Workflow management (in German)
  • PlanKo Integration Services - The PlanKo (i.e. cooperative planning) project aims at comprehensive approach to suffice several kinds of cooperative tasks. The PlanKo system is not just a collection of groupware tools that support several cooperative tasks, but it integrates different forms of cooperation. Despite its integration, a CSCW system has to be open to new forms of cooperative applications. To achieve this a framework of cooperating tools is required that provides basic integration services for the different cooperative applications.
  • GPM2WFS - The Transformation of business process models into workflow specifications for different workflow management systems - Primary research topic is the relationship of business process modeling and workflow management. Workflow specifications are derived out of business process models. Business process models are specified according to the SOM approach.
• Politecnico di Milano, the Department of Electronic Engineering and Information Sciences, Computer Engineering Section: Workflow Management - Topics of the work are: Conceptual Modeling of Workflows, Workflow Enactment by Active Rules, and Semantic Workflow Interoperability. Online papers available.
• Queen Mary and Westfield College (QMW), Department of Electronic Engineering, Intelligent Systems Applications Group, The DAI Unit: ADEPT: Advanced Decision Environment for Process Tasks - This collaborative project is concerned with the use of multi-agent systems in the management of business processes. Concentration is given to the problems involved in coordinating semi-autonomous departments of a large organisation or multiple organisations by utilising an agent's autonomy and managing their dependencies through automated negotiation. Online publications available.
• Rank Xerox Research Center: Studies of Technology, Organisations and Work - This program of work at Rank Xerox Research Centre, Cambridge is involved in innovative research that aligns new document technology with the work of customer organisations and investigates ways of working more productively with new technology. Adaptive Business Processes - The work of this group concentrates on easy and flexible process modelling. Their modeling and simulation prototype, called the Zippin System, supports declarative modeling and simulation of work processes. In addition, their open and distributed architecture, called WebFlow, provides coordination services on the World Wide Web. Object Based Coordination - A proposal on the one hand for a flexible object model and framework with built-in features supporting negotiation and coordination, and, on the other hand, a language facility exploiting these features.
• Sema Group sae: WIDE - Workflow on Intelligent Distributed Database Environment - A project which is concerned with extending the technology of distributed and active databases, in order to provide added value to advanced, application-oriented software products implementing workflow techniques.
• Siemens Telekooperations Zentrum: WoTel - Workflow und Telekooperation
• Technische Universität Dresden, Fakultät Informatik, Institut für Betriebssysteme, Datenbanken und Rechnernetze:
  • MEDIATOR - Aims for conception and realization of a development and management environment for business processes.
  • WorCOS (Workflow-Management based on Components and Object Services) - Design and implementation of a novel architecture for workflow management systems using the set of standardized CORBA services (including Naming, Event Management, PersistentObject, LifeCycle, Concurrency, Externalization, Relationships and Transactions) defined by OMG.
  • Projekt DOPAS (Document and Office Procedure Archive Server) - The aim of this 2-year project started in 1993 was the identification of the role database systems might play within the context of workflow management systems and to demonstrate the advantages of long-proven concepts of database technology. Closed.
  • VORTEL - The goal of the VORTEL project started in 1994 is to develop a generic platform for workflow management. The VORTEL platform will support interoperation of workflow management systems of different vendors on different platforms based on a new workflow teleservice. (See also VORTEL page at GMD). Closed.

  Online publications available.

• Università degli Studi di Milano, Dipartimento di Scienze dell'Informazione, Laboratory of Cooperation Technologies:
  • Work Process Modelling
    MWMS (Milan Workflow Management System) - The group working with MWMS have learned that the integration of a Workflow Management System with a well defined Communication Support System is a good basis for providing the user with both a simple Workflow Model and an effective overall Workflow Execution Module. Hence, it has started the design of a new Workflow Management System best suited to exploit the benefits of its integration with a Communication Support System. MWMS will be part of a larger system aiming to fully support work processes: the Milano System. Online papers available.
• Universiteit Twente, Dept. of Computer Science, Enschede, Netherlands: the TransCoop project - Past project that aimed at developing a transaction management support mechanism for cooperative applications. Finished in June, 1997. Online publications available.
• Universiteit Utrecht, Department of Computer Science: The Ariadne Project - The Ariadne project investigates computer support for hybrid collaborative office-processes, i.e. complex information processing activities that involve coordinated contributions by multiple people and computer systems. The goal is to develop a unified model that captures both structured administrative processes and semi-structured, ad-hoc activities, and to design and implement a flexible, generic and distributed environment that can support this diversity of activities.
• University of Colorado at Boulder, Department of Computer Science: Chautauqua - An experimental workflow system that was developed by Carlos Maltzahn and David Vollmar under the auspice of Skip Ellis. Its design focusses on dynamic change and exception handling.
• University of Edinburgh, Artificial Intellligence Applications Institute:
  • Enterprise - Enterprise modelling and integration - Budgetted at over £2.6 million, the Enterprise project is the UK government's major initiative to promote the use of knowledge-based systems in enterprise modelling, aiming to support organisations effectively in the Management of Change. The project focused on management innovation and the strategic use of IT to help manage change. It supports the use of enterprise modelling methods which capture various aspects of how a business works and how it is organised. The aim of enterprise modelling is to obtain an enterprise-wide view of an organisation which can then be used as a basis for taking decisions. During the Enterprise project, the Enterprise Toolset was developed. The Toolset uses executable process models to help users to perform their tasks. It is implemented using an agent-based architecture to integrate off-the-shelf tools in a plug-and-play style. The approach of the Enterprise project addresses the key problems of communication, process consistency, impacts of change, IT systems, and responsiveness.
  • TBPM - task-based process management - The overall aim of the TBPM project is to support the management of change in business processes with the help of intelligent task management and coordination technologies. To provide this support in a realistic business environment integration of existing tools and systems and effective communication must be achieved. In order to make the intelligent task
  • management and coordination technologies feasible, advanced process modelling techniques are required together with an agreed terminology (ontology).
• University of Georgia, The Large Scale Distributed Information Systems Lab, WORKFLOW projects at the LSDIS Lab:
  • METEOR, a Multiparadigm Transactional Workflow Management System - Workflow management techniques developed in the METEOR project are intended to support coordination of user and automated tasks in real-world multi-enterprise heterogeneous computing environments. Key capabilities include comprehensive toolkit for building workflows (map/data/task design) supporting high-level BPM as well as detailed workflow specification, automatic code generation for its engines, WEBWORK- a distributed Web-based engine (enactment environment), ORBWORK- a fully distributed CORBA-based engine, multidatabase access, error/failure handling, and recovery (using transactional concepts/techniques). METEOR system components are being trialed by industry partners/sponsors. METEOR₂ Workflow Demos available. In addition, there is a big bunch of on-line articles and technical reports available. See also Notes for SIGMOD 95 tutorial on Workflow Automation.
• University of Houston, Department of Computer Science, Houston, TX, USA OMNI Research Group - Traditional and extended transactions in distributed and heterogenous environment, Flexible Transaction model, interdependent data, concurrent execution of polytransactions, MSQL in the Narada environment. Some of the material is relevant in the context of transactional workflows.
• University of Illinois, Department of Computer Science, Advanced Collaborative Systems Laboratory:
  • The wOrlds Project - wOrlds is focused on the development of a next generation computer-supported collaborative work (CSCW) framework that allows seamless integration of existing tools and the support of a wide range of collaborative activities, from casual encounters through highly structured processes. The work is based on the locales theory. Online publications available.
  • ConversationBuilder papers - CB is a support tool that is intended to provide flexible, active support for (collaborative) work activities. This is work that has been done before wOrlds project (by this group).
• University of Massachusetts Amherst, the Department of Computer Science, Database Systems Laboratory:
  • Workflow Management and Support for Advanced Database Applications - The work of this group attemps to unify the workflow and extended transaction model based approaches. Implementation architecture is on the lines of WfMC reference model. Future plans include building a prototype system based on this architecture to study modeling, correctness and implementation issues when mobile users are involved, and when there are network/site failures. Links to several online publications. Finished.
  • The CREW (Correct and Reliable Execution of Workflows) - This project attempts to solve the problem of handling failures and performing synchronization of concurrent workflows in centralized as well as in parallel and distributed  environments.
  • WorldFlow: Workflow Management over the Web - This work focuses on two of the problems that arise in implementing workflows on the Web, namely (i) dealing with the unreliability of the Web in the form of server/network failures and delays and (ii) improving efficiency.
• The University of Manchester, The Department of Computer Science, The Informatics Process Group:
  • APPUS: Assisting Process Performance and Utilisation through Simulation
  • Process Evolution and Legacy Systems Integration using Active Models (PELSIAM)
  • Overview of Process Modelling
  • Process Analysis and Design Methodology (PADM) - A large postscript document describing the methodology.
  • Process Engineering Framework (PEF)
  • PROMOTER - is devoted to software process modelling

  Many On-line publications available on process modeling.

• The University of Memphis: FedEx Center for Cycle Time Research - Much of the Center's work focuses on finding new ways of using information technology and organizational change to speed the flow of information, thereby reducing paperwork and needless activity. The Center operates from a grant provided by FedEx Corporation.
• University of Toronto, Department of Computer Science: CODES - A Model and a Specification Language for Workflows
• Universität Bremen, Mathematik und Informatik: MOKASSIN - The aim of the MOKASSIN-project is the development of a software tool for modelling and bringing together heterogeneous subsystems by means of multi-agent-technology. Moreover, complex systems and processes are represented with the help of MOKASSIN in a transparent way to the user and the system will support the Total Quality Management. For the modelling of business processes innovative approaches for decentralised modelling, individual adaption and flexible design are introduced in MOKASSIN. Thus, the project provides a comprehensive process technology whose application does not keep restricted to well structured business processes as offered by conventional workflow management systems. Online publications available.
• Universität des Saarlandes, Database group (Gerhard Weikum): MENTOR - Middleware for enterprise-wide workflow management - This group is developing infrastructure software, so-called middleware, with the goal of coordinated and reliable execution of workflows in highly heterogeneous, distributed information systems. Online publications available from this page.
• Universität Klagenfurt, Department of Informatics, Workflow Research:
  • Project: Workflow Transactions - The main objective of the project is the conceptual development of an enhanced mechanism for failure and exception handling in the commercial Workflow Management System (WFMS) WorkFlow of the company CSE Systems.
  • The Workflow System Panta Rhei - A WWW-based workflow application demo.
• Universität Koblenz: Multi Purpose Enterprise MOdelling (MEMO) - A Tool Supported Methodology for Analyzing and (Re-) Designing Business Information Systems.
• Universität Stuttgart, Fakultätsinformationssystem, Institute of Parallel and Distributed High-Performance Systems (IPVR):
  • APRICOTS (A Prototype Implementation of a ConTract System) - A prototype that was implemented to show the feasibility of the concepts introduced by the ConTract model [Elmagarmid 92]. Although the model was introduced as an extended transaction model [Elmagarmid92], it introduced all features to implement advanced (transactional) workflow systems. The goal of the ConTract model is to provide programmers of long-lived applications (hours, days, weeks, ...) with guaranteed semantics for the execution. Since recovery actions in case of failures are handled automatically by the run-time system, a programmer does not need to program those
    actions explicitly. Similar to classical (ACID) transactions one can rely on the guarantees of the system: minimal loss of work in case of failures, forward recovery after a failure, and fault-tolerant run-time system. Several online papers available.
  • PoliFlow - Reliable and secure workflow management for widely distributed and heterogenous application environments with integrated groupware and telecooperation services. PoliFlow is one of the four POLIKOM projects that together aims for fundamental technological and scientific solutions to support in an efficient manner coordination and cooperation in widely distributed enterprise environments.
  • Workflow Management Systems - The overall goal of this project is the cooperation and the technology transfer with IBM regarding the enhancement of the workflow management system FlowMark developed by IBM.

  Online papers available.

• Universität Zürich, The Department of Computer Science, The Database Technology Research Group:
  • SWORDIES (Swiss Workflow in a Distributed Environment) - The SWORDIES project is a research and development project which investigates on the systematic development of cooperative process-oriented environments with particular focus on distribution and heterogeneity.
  • TRAMS (Transactions and Active Database Mechanisms for Workflow Management) - The aim of the TRAMS project is to develop a workflow management system (WFMS) supporting the modeling and enactment of processes. See also TRAMS homepage at  ETH.
  • EvE, an Event-Driven Distributed Workflow Execution Engine - The EvE (EVent Engine) project has as its objective to investigate event-driven workflow execution.
  • The SEAMAN Project - The SEAMAN (Software Engineering with Active Mechanisms) project has as its objective to investigate the use of active mechanisms to support the construction and operation of integrated Cooperative Process-centered Environments (CPEs) such as workflow management systems and process-centered software engineering environments.
• Universität St.Gallen, Institute for Information Management:
  • CC Process Engineering (CC PRO) - CC PRO's areas of interest are business process redesign, continuous improvement and process management. The Center's primary goal in these areas is to develop practicable methods and tools for creating added business value. Completed in 1997.
  • CC Process and Systems Integration (CC PSI) - The research of the CC PSI is focused on the following goals: Model for the realization of optimized Business Processes based on a Heterogeneous Application Architecture, Integration of Data in a Heterogeneous Application Architecture and, Method for the Integration of new Applications in an existing Heterogeneous Application Architecture and, Techniques used for the Analysis of existing Information Systems.
• Universität Ulm, Faculty of Computer Science, Department of Databases and Information Systems (DBIS):
  • ADEPT - Most of the research issues addressed in the context of process-oriented information systems cannot be treated reasonably well when considered in an isolated fashion only. Therefore, the ADEPT project is trying to look at the different facets of advanced process-oriented information systems in conjunction with each other: workflow modeling concepts, component-based software development, support of temporal aspects, support of dynamic changes, management of interworkflow dependencies, man-machine interfaces, environments for large-scale workflow execution, architectural and ADEPT implementation issues. Online publications available.
  • Using Workflow management Systems for Clinical Applications - The goal is to elaborate a complete "process map" for this hospital, and to evaluate to which extent today's workflow technology – especially the workflow management system (WfMS) WorkParty – is (already) able to meet the requirements of clinical workflow applications. Online publications available.
• Universität Würzburg, Fakultät für Mathematik und Informatik, Department of Computer Science, Lehrstuhl für Informatik III: Petri-Net Based Performance Analysis of Workflow Models and Business Processes.
• VTT, the Technical Research Centre of Finland, VTT Information Technology:
  • The TransCoop project - Past project that aimed at developing a transaction management support mechanism for cooperative applications. The special interest area of VTT team in this project was transactional workflows. See also: Forschungszentrum Informationstechnik GmbH (GMD) from Germany (the prime contractor) and University of Twente (UT) from Netherlands.
  • DOCSTEP II (Technical DOCumentation creation and management using STEP) - DOCSTEP aims at improving the quality of documentation by developing and integrating tools providing facilities for: managing multi-authored documentation, handling technical language and document content in multi-lingual environments, integrating product information and, taking into account production process constraints. Workflow and configuration management is used to deal with elements concerning the pragmatics of the documents, e.g. corporate functional structure, production schedules, responsibilities, etc.
  • OsiCon
• Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Institut für Wirtschaftsinformatik, Lehrstuhl für Wirtschaftsinformatik und Informationsmanagement: Workflowmanagement - Research topics include: comparing workflow management systems with the help of metamodel, integration of distibuted workflow systems and workflow management in industrial production. (German only).
• The Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, The MIT Center for Genome Research: Managing Laboratory Workflow with LabBase

• National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Manufacturing Systems Integration Division: Process Specification Language Project
• Queen Mary and Westfield College, Department of Electronic Engineering, Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Unit (DAI): ADEPT: Advanced Decision Environment for Process Tasks