Title
An Integrated Life Cycle For Workflow Management Based On Learning And Planning
Abstract
The ability to describe business processes as executable models has always been one of the fundamental premises of workflow management. Yet, the tacit nature of human knowledge is often an obstacle to eliciting accurate process models. On the other hand, the result of process modeling is a static plan of action, which is difficult to adapt to changing procedures or to different business goals. In this article, we attempt to address these problems by approaching workflow management with a combination of learning and planning techniques. Assuming that processes cannot be fully described at buildtime, we make use of learning techniques, namely Inductive Logic Programming (ILP), in order to discover workflow activities and to describe them as planning operators. These operators will be subsequently fed to a partial-order planner in order to find the process model as a planning solution. The continuous interplay between learning, planning and execution aims at arriving at a feasible plan by successive refinement of the operators. The approach is illustrated in two simple scenarios. Following a discussion of related work, the paper concludes by presenting the main challenges that remain to be solved.
Year
DOI
Venue
2006
10.1142/S0218843006001463
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF COOPERATIVE INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Keywords
Field
DocType
workflow, BPM, inductive logic programming (ILP), learning, planning
Business process management,Workflow technology,Business process,Computer science,Process modeling,Workflow engine,Event-driven process chain,Workflow management system,Workflow,Database
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
15
4
0218-8430
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
38
1.54
21
Authors
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
HUGO M. FERREIRA1401.90
Diogo R. Ferreira253935.43