An Enterprise Collaborative Portal with a Case-Based Reasoning Tool for Business Process Model Creation
This paper proposes an approach employing Case-based Reasoning (CBR) techniques for collaborative authoring of business process models by a geographically dispersed team. The approach enables co-ordination of dynamic workflows of the virtual enterprise team. The paper describes an enterprise collaborative portal architecture combining collaboration, graphical process modelling and CBR tools and presents a case study illustrating the proposed approach.
Great work, very promising. I would like to know if you have estimated how long it would take a company to implement (put into use) your ECP with CBR?
Gonzalo.
Thank you for your question. Our apologies for the delay in replying to you.
There was no special reason for adopting that package. The software we used was readily available. Our aim was merely to demonstrate the feasibility of the idea. Any suitable package could have been employed.
Thank you for your question, Gonzalo. Our apologies for the delay in replying to you.
I cannot give you a general estimate of the time required to implement the proposed ECP with CBR. This would depend on the number and availability of cases and the format they are in (i.e. whether they are ready for incorporation in the casebase or whether work is needed to make them suitable for this). Perhaps, our co-author Daniela could comment on this point when she is available.
Hi, Gonzalo, I do apologise for the delay of my reply. I think it would be easy for the company to use the ECP in their business, it is a well-known tool nowadays. As for the CBR tool, as prof. Pham has already commented it's more difficult to estimate the time, first we need to know what is the status-quo of the company. Some time will be also required to model the cases and fill in the case base. All the process might take between couple of months to 1 year, I guess.
Great paper. Have you thought in detail about the safety and security by building such a portal.
It was interesting to read your paper. You gave a very good description of the topic.
I believe such portals have many potential applications. I have only a question concerning your portal, is it user friendly?
Thank you
Hello and thanks for your question. No, I haven't thought the safety and the security issues yet, some of them could be solved, I guess by applying a commercial enterprise management system, which provides secure and authorised access to the data. There are still more issues to be considered regarding the collaborative creation of the process model.
Hi, Maria, thank you very much for your question. Yes, the suggested portal is user friendly, it is built on Java servlets and JSP, which provide easy to follow forms and patterns. On the other hand, some of the services on the portal are provided by a commercial enterprise management system, which requires certain level of knowledge of that software. It is possible though to build the portal based on freeware, so the design would depend only on the developer.
Hi, Maria, thank you very much for your question. Yes, the suggested portal is user friendly, it is built on Java servlets and JSP, which provide easy to follow forms and patterns. On the other hand, some of the services on the portal are provided by a commercial enterprise management system, which requires certain level of knowledge of that software. It is possible though to build the portal based on freeware, so the design would depend only on the developer.
Why are you using Windows NetMeeting not others?