On June 7, 2017 Andreas Lanz successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled
Adaptive Time- and Process-Aware Information Systems
at Ulm University, Germany. The DBIS team is pleased to congratulate Andreas on his successful PhD defense (Dr. rer. nat. with distinction; summa cum laude) and wishes him and his famility all the best for their future. Andreas' PhD advisor and PhD promotor was Prof. Dr. Manfred Reichert, the external referees were Prof. Dr. Akhil Kumar (PennState University, US) and Prof. Dr. Roberto Posenato (University of Verona, Italy). Andreas conducted his research in the ATAPIS project, which targets at the integration of the temporal pespective in process-aware information systems.
Members of the PhD committee:
• Prof. Dr. Uwe Schöning (Chairman)
• Prof. Dr. Manfred Reichert (Promotor and First Referee)
• Prof. Dr. Roberto Posenato (External Referee, University of Verona, Italy)
• Prof. Dr. Akhil Kumar (External Referee, PennState University, US)
• Prof. Dr. Susanne Biundo-Stephan (Core Committee Member)
• Prof. Dr. Matthias Tichy (Core Committee Member)
Thesis Abstract
Temporal aspects play a crucial role in today's business processes. Delivery times, appointments and deadlines must be met, processing times and durations be monitored, and optimization objectives shall be pursued. Unfortunately, contemporary process-aware information systems (PAISs) - the go-to solution for the computer-aided support of business processes - still lack a sophisticated support of the time perspective, significantly restricting their applicability in practice. Hence, there is a high demand for a more profound support of temporal aspects in PAIS.
To address this gap, this thesis proposes the ATAPIS framework for supporting the time perspective of business processes in PAIS. First, a universal and comprehensive set of time patterns is presented. Respective time patterns represent temporal concepts commonly found in business processes and are based on empirical evidence. Moreover, a precise formal semantics for each of the time patterns is provided. Respective formal semantics enable the proper integration of the time patterns into PAIS allowing for the specification of time-aware process schemas. On this basis, a generic framework for implementing the time patterns is discussed. The framework and its techniques enable the verification of time-aware process schemas regarding their temporal consistency, i.e., their ability to be successfully executed without violating any of their temporal constraints. The framework particularly pays attention to the contingent nature of activity durations as well as alternative execution paths. Subsequently, an algorithm as well as techniques for executing and monitoring time-aware process instances in PAIS is provided. Finally, a set of change operations for dynamically modifying time-aware process instances during run time is suggested. To reduce the complexity involved when applying multiple change operations a sophisticated approximation-based technique is presented.
Altogether, the ATAPIS framework provides fundamental concepts, techniques and algorithms for integrating the time perspective into PAIS. As beauty of this framework the specification, execution and evolution of business processes is supported by an integrated approach.