Chapter 11: Knowledge and Information Management

Title: On the implementation of a framework for modeling and deploying decision processes in engineering

Author(s): Martin Eigner, Martin Langlotz, Fabrice Mogo Nem

Address: Institute for Virtual Product Engineering, University of Kaiserslautern, Gottlieb-Daimler-Str. 44, 67663 Kaiserslautern, Germany | Institute for Virtual Product Engineering, University of Kaiserslautern, Gottlieb-Daimler-Str. 44, 67663 Kaiserslautern, Germany | Institute for Virtual Product Engineering, University of Kaiserslautern, Gottlieb-Daimler-Str. 44, 67663 Kaiserslautern, Germany

Reference: International Conference on Product Lifecycle Management 2010 pp. 622 - 632

Abstract/Summary: Decision making in product engineering often requires complex information processing and coordination works. While traditional workflow technologies have been successfully applied for supporting the automation of repetitive business processes, they are not powerful enough to support decision processes occurring during product engineering. As it will be shown in this paper, the business processes related to product engineering (so called engineering processes) can be linked with decision processes comprising the informational and work processes in preparation of a decision situation that nowadays occur undocumented and unstructured within the engineering processes. In order to support the dynamically changing decision processes through workflow technologies, a high level of flexibility is required. This paper presents a framework for the modeling and deployment of an IT-support for decision processes using a flexible workflow technology. A prototypical implementation of this framework based on a PDM system and its integrated workflow engine is also presented.

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