System and mechanism to create autonomic business process solutions

• US 20050108022A1
• Filed: 11/13/2003
• Published: 05/19/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 11/13/2003
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Kumaran, Santhosh, Zeng, Liangzhao, Huang, Ying, Kapoor, Shubir, Li, Yingjie, Jeng, Jun-Jang, Nigam, Anil, Bhattacharya, Kamal, Wu, Frederick Y.
• Application Number:
  US10/706,040
• Publication Number:
  US 20050108022A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/7
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06375 Prediction of business process outcome or impact based on a proposed change

Abstract

Automomic business processes management solutions have capabilities to adapt themselves to changes in the business environment. These autonomic business solutions are built by wiring together autonomic solution components called BPbots (Business Process robots). BPbots are granular solution components representing an aspect of a business process. In general, BPbots consist of two parts, an execution module and a managerial module. The execution module represents the standard, non-autonomic solution component, such as a standard process flow model describing the long-running flow or business adapter describing the communication of the solution with service providers (such as applications). The managerial module is responsible for the autonomic behavior of the BPbot. The managerial component has the ability to monitor the execution module, analyze the performance, plan new, more appropriate execution patterns and change the behavior of the execution module according to the new plan.

Claims

1. A system for extracting and managing a business process that can automatically adapt the process to changing business conditions comprising:

a data source containing quantified business goals;

an execution module that can govern execution of the process; and

a managerial module that can monitor process performance and can modify the business process to achieve the business goals.

2. The system recited in claim 1, wherein the execution module comprises:

a definition of the business process steps and sequencing rules for the steps; and

means for executing the process according to the definition.

3. The system recited in claim 2, wherein the means for executing the process according to the definition comprises a workflow engine or means to invoke a workflow engine.

4. The system recited in claim 2, wherein the means for executing the process according to the definition comprises a state machine engine or means to invoke a state machine engine.

5. The system recited in claim 1, wherein the managerial module comprises:

a knowledge base governing how to modify the business process based on business goals; and

means for modifying the execution module so as to modify the business process executed by the execution module.

6. The system recited in claim 1, wherein the managerial module detects changes in conditions external to the business process and modifies the business process such that the business goals can be met under changed conditions.

7. The system recited in claim 6, wherein the managerial module communicates to external entities conditions of the business process it manages.

8. The system recited in claim 7, wherein conditions detected by the managerial module include conditions of like systems that execute and manage other business processes.

9. The system recited in claim 1, wherein the managerial module is capable of forming requests and instructions, and sending, receiving and parsing execution model scripts.

10. The system recited in claim 1, wherein the execution module comprises one or more execution modules with corresponding managerial modules and further comprises a manager service managing the one or more execution modules and corresponding managerial modules.