Abstract
Typical methods for representing business, engineering, and manufacturing processes represent process information by means of rather restricted, often graphical languages. These languages are often fine as far as they go, but for many purposes—information sharing, in particular—much more precise, detailed representations of enterprise processes are required. In this paper we develop an approach to the rigorous representation of process information based on situation theory. We begin with an informal account of the semantic categories of the approach including situations, infons, types, activities, and processes, as well as the central relations that can hold between them. A framework known as ST that builds upon the Knowledge Interchange Format (KIF) is introduced for expressing information in these terms. The use of ST is then illustrated in detail by means of a series of examples.
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Keywords
References
Allen, J., and Hayes, P. (1987) Moments and points in an interval-based temporal logic. Technical Report TR180, Departments of Computer Science and Philosophy, University of Rochester.
Barwise, J., and Perry, J. (1983) Situations and Attitudes. MIT Press/Bradford Books, Cambridge.
Barwise, J. (1987) The Situation in Logic. CSLI Lecture Notes, CSLI Publications, Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University.
Devlin, K. (1991) Logic and Information. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Enderton, H. (1972) A Mathematical Introduction to Logic. Academic Press, New York.
Genesereth, M. R., and Fikes, R. E. (1992) Knowledge Interchange Format version 3.0 — Reference Manual. Technical report Logic-92–1, Logic Group, Department of Computer Science, Stanford University, CA.
Grtininger M., and Fox, M. (1994) The design and evaluation of ontologies for enterprise engineering. Ms., Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto.
Gruninger, M., and Fox, M. (1995) Methodology for the design and evaluation of ontologies. IJCAI-95 Workshop on Basic Issues in Ontology, Montreal, August 1995.
Grtininger M., and Pinto, J. (1995) A theory of complex actions for enterprise modelling, AAAI Spring Symposium: Extending Theories of Action, Stanford University, March 1995.
Hayes, P. (1977) In defense of logic. Proceedings of the Fifth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence. Morgan Kaufmann, Los Altos, CA, 559–565.
Lee, J., Yost G., and the PIF Working Group (1994) The PIF process interchange format and framework. Working Paper 180, MIT Center for Coordination Science. Available in postscript format by anonymous ftp from pound.mit.edu as CCSWP180.ps in the directory /PUB/CCS W orking_Papers/.
McCarthy J., and Hayes, P. (1969) Some philosophical problems from the standpoint of artificial intelligence. In B. Meltzer and D. Michie (eds.), Machine Intelligence 4, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, pp. 463–502. Also in B. L. Weber and N. Nilsson, Readings in Artificial Intelligence, Morgan Kaufmann, Los Altos, CA, 1981.
McCarthy, J. (1968) Programs with Common Sense. In M. Minsky (ed.), Semantic Information Processing, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 403–418.
Menzel, C., and Mayer, R. (forthcoming) A Situation Theoretic Framework for Process Modeling. Forthcoming in the International Journal for Concurrent Engineering Research Applications.
van Bentham, J. (1983) The Logic of Time. D. Reidel Publishing Co., Dordrecht, Holland.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1996 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Menzel, C., Mayer, R.J. (1996). A Situation Theoretic Approach to the Representation of Processes. In: Bernus, P., Nemes, L. (eds) Modelling and Methodologies for Enterprise Integration. IFIP — The International Federation for Information Processing. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-34983-1_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-34983-1_14
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4757-5862-7
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-34983-1
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive