Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Agent-based workflow management systems (WfMSs)

JBees: a distributed and adaptive WfMS with monitoring and controlling capabilities

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Information Systems and e-Business Management Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Workflow management systems (WfMSs) based on agent technology can cope with the rapidly evolving business environment better than most other systems as they are more flexible and open. In this paper we describe a possible architecture of such a system by means of our prototype WfMS called JBees. The combination of collaborating agents and the Coloured Petri Net (CPN)-formalism in JBees enables a flexible and adaptive system with the possibility of simulation, analysis, and monitoring of the process execution in order to identify potential inconsistencies and to provide appropriate information to the workflow administrator for the purpose of the process improvement.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • van der Aalst WMP (1996) Three good reasons for using a Petri-net-based Workflow Management System. In: Navathe S, Wakayama T (eds) Proceedings of the international working conference on information and process integration in enterprises (IPIC 1996), Cambridge, pp 179–201

  • van der Aalst WMP (2001) Exterminating the dynamic change bug: a concrete approach to support workflow change. Inf Syst Front 3(3):297–317

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • van der Aalst WMP, van Hee K (2002) Workflow management: models, methods, and systems. MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • van der Aalst WMP, Basten T, Verbeek HMW, Verkoulen PAC, Voorhoeve M (1999) Adaptive workflow: an approach based on inheritance. In: Ibrahim LM, Drabble B (eds) IJCAI 1999 Workshop on intelligent workflow and process management: the new frontier for AI in business, pp 36–45

  • van der Aalst WMP, Hofstede AHM, Kiepuszewski B, Barros AP (2002) Workflow patterns. Technical report, Queensland University of Technology http://tmitwww.tm.tue.nl/research/patterns/

  • Bandinelli S, Fuggetta A, Ghezzi C (1993) Process model evolution in the spade environment, Technical Report No. 14, ESPRIT-III Project GOODSTEP (6115). IEEE transactions on software engineering, 19(12):1128–1144

  • Bradshaw J (1997) An introduction to software agents. In: Bradshaw J (ed) Software agents. MIT Press, Cambridge, pp 3–46

    Google Scholar 

  • Chen Q, Hsu M, Dayal U, Griss ML (2000) Multiagent cooperation, dynamic workflow and XML for ecommerce automation. In: 4th international conference on autonomous agents, Barcelona, Spain

  • Cui B, Odgers Z, Schroeder M (1998) An in-service agent monitoring and analysis system. In: 11th IEEE international conference on tools with artificial intelligence, Chicago, USA, pp 237–244

  • Department of Information Science, University of Otago. JBees. http://jbees.sourceforge.net (2004)

  • Fleurke M (2004) JBees, an adaptive workflow management system—an approach based on petri nets and 10 Lars Ehrler et al. agents. Master’s Thesis, Department of Computer Science, University of Twente

  • Fleurke M, Ehrler L, Purvis M (2003) JBees—an adaptive and distributed framework for workflow systems. In: Ali Ghorbani, Stephen Marsh (eds) Workshop on collaboration agents: autonomous agents for collaborative environments (COLA). Halifax, Canada, pp 69–76 http://www.cs.unb.ca/∼ghorbani/cola/proceedings/NRC-46519.pdf, 2003. National Research Council Canada, Institute for Information Technology

  • Free Software Foundation (2000) GNU Lesser General Public License

  • Jensen K (1992) Coloured Petri nets—basic concepts, analysis methods and practical use, vol 1. Basic concepts. EATCS monographs on theoretical computer science. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg New York

  • Jennings NR, Faratin P, Norman TJ, O’Brien P, Odgers B (2000) Autonomous agents for business process management. Int J Appl Artif Intell 14(2):145–189

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Joeris G (2000) Decentralized and flexible workflow enactment based on task coordination agents. In: 2nd international bi-conference workshop on agent-oriented information systems (AOIS 2000 @ CAiSE*00), Stockholm, Sweden, iCue Publishing, Berlin, pp 41–62

  • Meilin S, Guangxin Y, Yong, Shangguang W (1998) Workflow management systems: a survey in proceedings of IEEE international conference on communication technology, scw.cs.tsinghua.edu.cn/cscwpapers/ygxin/WfMSSurvey.pdf

  • Muehlen MZ, Rosemann M (2000) Workflow-based process monitoring and controlling—technical and organizational issues. In: 33rd Hawaii international conference on system sciences, Maui, HI, USA

  • Nissen ME (2000) Supply chain process and agent design for E-commerce. In: 33rd Hawaii international conference on system sciences

  • Nowostawski M, Bush G, Purvis MK, Cranefield S (2001) A multilevel approach and infrastructure for agent-oriented software development. In: International workshop on infrastructure for agents, MAS and Scalable MAS, http://www.umcs.maine.edu/∼wagner/workshop/01 nowostawski bush purvis et al.pdf, 2001

  • Nowostawski M (2003) JFern—Java-based Petri net framework

  • Purvis M, Purvis M, Lemalu S (2001) A framework for distributed workflow systems. In: 34th Annual Hawaii international conference on system sciences (HICSS-34)

  • Purvis MK, Cranefield S, Nowostawski M, Carter D (2002) Opal: a multi-level infrastructure for agent-oriented software development. The information science discussion paper series no 2002/01, Department of Information Science, University of Otago, Dunedin

  • Savarimuthu BTR, Purvis M, Fleurke M (2004) Monitoring and controlling of a workflow management system. In: Proceedings Australasian Workshop on Data Mining and Web Intelligence (DMWI2004)

  • Schael T (1998) Workflow management systems for process organisations. Lecture notes in computer science, vol 1096. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Shepherdson JW, Thompson SG, Odgers B (1998) Cross organisational workflow coordinated by software agents. In: CEUR workshop proceedings No 17 cross-organisational workflow management and coordination, San Francisco, USA

  • Shoham Y (1997) An overview of agent-oriented programming. In: Bradshaw J (ed) Software agents. MIT Press, Cambridge, pp 271–290

    Google Scholar 

  • Stormer H (2001) AWA—a flexible agent-workflow system. In: Workshop on agent-based approaches to B2B at the 5th international conference on autonomous agents (AGENTS 2001), Montreal, Canada

  • Sycara KP (1998) Multiagent systems. AI magazine 19(2):79–92

    Google Scholar 

  • The workflow management coalition (1995) The workflow reference model

  • Wang M, Wang H (2002) Intelligent agent supported flexible workflow monitoring system. In: Advanced information systems engineering: 14th international conference, CAiSE 2002, Toronto, Canada

  • Wooldridge MJ (1999) Intelligent agents. In: Weiss G (ed) Multiagent systems. MIT Press, Cambridge, pp 27–77

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Mariusz Nowostawski for his help in implementing the system and improving JFern, and Prof. Martin Purvis for supporting this work. This work has been supported by the Otago Research Grant ORG-0103-0304. Lars Ehrler thanks the Evangelisches Studienwerk Villigst e.V., Schwerte, Germany, for their financial support.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information Science, University of Otago, PO Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand

    Lars Ehrler, Martin Fleurke, Maryam Purvis & Bastin Tony Roy Savarimuthu

  2. Fakultät Informatik, Technische Universität, Dresden, Germany

    Lars Ehrler

  3. Department of Computer Science, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands

    Martin Fleurke

Authors
  1. Lars Ehrler
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Martin Fleurke
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Maryam Purvis
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Bastin Tony Roy Savarimuthu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Maryam Purvis.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Ehrler, L., Fleurke, M., Purvis, M. et al. Agent-based workflow management systems (WfMSs). ISeB 4, 5–23 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10257-005-0010-9

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10257-005-0010-9

Keywords

Search

Navigation