On July 24, 2014 Ulrich Kreher successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled

Concepts, Architecture and Implementation of an Adaptive Process Management System

at Ulm University, Germany. The DBIS team is pleased to congratulate Ulrich on his successful PhD defense and wishes him all the best for his future. Ulrich's PhD advisor and PhD promotor has been Prof. Dr. Manfred Reichert.

Members of the PhD committee:

• Prof. Dr. Uwe Schöning (Chairman)
• Prof. Dr. Manfred Reichert (Promotor and First Referee)
• Prof. Dr. Peter Dadam (Second Referee)
• Prof. Dr. Franz Schweiggert (Core Committee Member)
• Prof. Dr. Franz Hauck (Core Committee Member)

Backgrounds

Process-aware information systems (PAISs) must not implement business processes in a rigid manner, but allow authorized users to deviate from the implemented workflows on-the-fly and to dynamically evolve them over time if required.

While there has been a lot of work on the theoretical foundations of dynamic process changes, there is still a lack of PAISs actually implementing respective features. Designing the architecture of an adaptive PAIS, however, constitutes a big challenge due to the high complexity emerging in the context of dynamic process changes. Besides this, non-functional requirements like performance, robustness, extensibility, security and usability must be met by the PAIS.

In his PhD thesis project, Ulrich Kreher has realized a holistic approach to master this complexity. Based on a conceptual framework for adaptive process management, which was developed in the ADEPT1 and ADEPT2 research projects, he has designed an advanced architecture for next generation process management technology. The thesis discusses major system requirements and basic architectural principles, gives insights into selected system components and concepts, and shows how various kinds of dynamic changes can be realized in an integrated and efficient manner.

Ulrich’s thesis was created in the context of the ADEPT2 research project. Its results are fundamenal for the AristaFlow BPM Suite. This next generation process management technology  has been successfully  distributed on the BPM market by the AristaFlow GmbH – a spin-off of our institute -- for several years.

Reference:

Ulrich Kreher: Concepts, Architecture and Implementation of an Adaptive Process Management System, PhD Thesis, University of Ulm, Germany, 2014