Goal-driven context-sensitive production processes : a case study using BPMN

Abstract

The Fourth Industrial Revolution, also known as Industry 4.0 or Industrial Internet, predicts that Smart Factories driven by Internet of Things (IoT) and Cyber-Physical Systems, will reinvent the traditional manufacturing industry into a digitalized, a context-aware, and an automated manufacturing that will flourish with contemporary Information and Communication Technology (ICT). As the IoT are being deployed across production cites of the manufacturing companies, the need of decision making inside a business process based upon the received contextual data such as employee availability, machine status, etc. from the execution environment has transpired. Production processes need to be updated and optimized frequently to stay competitive in the market. Context-sensitive Adaptive Production Processes is an adept concept that illustrates how a business process can be context-sensitive keeping itself aligned with the abstract organizational goals. The notion of Context-sensitive Adaptive Production Processes leads us to Context-sensitive Execution Step (CES), a logical construct, that encompasses multiple alternative processes, albeit the best-fitting alternative can only be selected, optimized, and executed in runtime. Realization of the context-sensitive business processes requires a model-driven approach. Being Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) the de-facto standard for business processes modeling, business experts of manufacturing companies can use custom CES construct of BPMN to model and execute context-sensitive business processes in a model-driven approach. This case study is based upon a scenario where there exists multiple alternatives to achieve the same goal in production, nevertheless all the alternatives are not suitable at a certain point of time as changes in business objectives and execution environment makes adaption tougher. Properties of intelligent production processes are different from traditional processes. Such properties along with the scrutinized properties of standard BPMN facilitates modeling CES integrated processes in BPMN. From the requirements inferred from these properties, standard BPMN is extended with extensions such that context-sensitive business processes can be modeled and executed seamlessly. Developed extensions include a new type of process construct and a new type of process definition that are technology agnostic. Thus, CES approach provides a comprehensive solution that makes production processes contextsensitive as well as goal-driven in unison.