1. Integration of Workflow and Agent Technology for Business Process Management Yuhong Yan. Maamar, Z. Weiming Shen Enterprise Integration Lab.Toronto Univ.Canada Computer Supported Cooperative Work in Design, The Sixth International Conference on, 2001

2. 2 Agenda Introduction Workflow Management Software Agent Technology Integration of Workflow and Agent Technologies Conclusion

3. 3 Introduction Benefits of workflow management: –Explicit definition –Quick reaction to changing environments –Easy tracking of operations Focus on managing the process logic Needs to integrate others : activity assignment, resource allocation, etc.

4. 4 Workflow Management for Business Process Management Workflow is the computerized facilitation or automation of a business process, in whole or part – by WfMC ’ s definition Benefits of applying workflow –Explicitly defined, then easy to optimize –Modularized, then reorganized by WFMS –Track daily operations –Integrate applications on different platform

5. 5 Workflow Management (Cont.) –Provide personal workplaces –Separate business logic, can concentrate only on the task Shortcomings –Relying on one central control –Lack of automation –Lack of reactivity –Lack of resources management

6. 6 Workflow Management (Cont.) –Lack of semantics –Lack of generic interfaces –Lack of interoperation To embody WFMSs with mechanisms from other technologies

7. 7 Software Agent Technology for Business Process Management An agent is a computer system situated in some environment, and that is capable of autonomous action in this environment in order to meet its design objectives – Jennings and Wooldridge An “ agent based system ” means one in which the key abstraction used in that of agent

8. 8 Software Agent Technology (Cont.) Benefits –Distributed system architecture –Automation –Interaction –Resource management –Reactivity –Interoperation among heterogeneous systems

9. 9 Software Agent Technology (Cont.) –Intelligent decision-making Problems if only use agent technology –Missing coordination mechanism –Optimization is difficult due to lack of explicitly definitions –Not easy to track daily operations

10. 10 Integration of Workflow and Agent Technologies Agent-enhanced workflow management –One central workflow engine controls all the activities –Agents are invocated during the execution of one work item to implement certain tasks –Current commercial WFMSs use the concept of agents

11. 11 Agent-enhanced (Cont.)

12. 12 Agent-enhanced (Cont.) Agents are like services provided by the WFMS – to increase automation Agents do not necessarily interact with each other Workflow engine is responsible to create and eliminate agents The agent is more like a piece of ordinary software

13. 13 Integration of Workflow and Agent Technologies (Cont.) Agent-based workflow management –A distributed system consisting of multiple agents –These agents are independent to each other and each is responsible for process execution –The whole business process is formed by the pieces of sub-networks within those agents

14. 14 Agent-based (Cont.)

15. 15 Agent-based (Cont.) The process logic is embedded in the agents, rather than being explicitly represented elsewhere Benefits workflow technology –Providing distributed system architecture –Providing communication methods –Providing automation behavior

16. 16 Agent-based (Cont.) –Reaction to environment –Benefits of high level features Some important research issues –System architecture –Negotiation → resource management & scheduling –Modeling, learning, agent architecture

17. 17 Integration of Workflow and Agent Technologies (Cont.) The life cycle of a business process management – O ’ Brain and Wiegrand –creation, provisioning, enactment Creation –involves the analysis modeling and definition of the business processes –main aim is to present the logic of the activities in business process

18. 18 –mainly done at design time Provisioning –involves the assignment of resources –require negotiating,planning,scheduling –place at run time Enactment –Involves the management activities –place at run time Remarks (Cont.)

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20. 20 Conclusion Agent-enhanced workflow system are widely adopted Agent-based workflow system are still in prototypes Agents can help to automate the management of business process Future research opportunities