Telework Co-ordination Services for Co-operative Business Processes| Telework Co-ordination Services for Co-operative Business Processes |
Index |
Public Domain - Project Presentations You find here the latest achievements of COBIP in form of a technical summary.
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Workpackage
2  Back to TopStudy of User Needs Survey of Telework Activities in Europe with Special Focus on Business Proccess Orientation - D2.1 The present survey of telework activities aims at investigating the recent position of telework in society and business in Europ e based on an literature and Internet-research. To get a clearer idea of how much telework is a topic in different regions of Europe this survey was to be carried out in the COBIP-Project to catch an up-to-date snapshot of European telework activities in late 1997 to early 1998 and extract information where possible.Special attention was given to task and process structure of different telework applications with focus on the business process orientation. |
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| After a short look at the theoretical background, technological, legal, social and economic framework, the teleworkability of jobs will be analysed. In addition, some new concepts that change work-structure in the context of business process re-engineering with special focu s on the process orientation positively are explained and examined according to their influence on telework; referring to the telework definition in the scope of the COBIP-Project settled up by all Project-Partners during the Kick-Off meeting the survey is mostly limited to the intra-organisational form of telework (see figure above). Hereafter, it will be looked at the present dissemination of telework in Europe. This will be done in two steps: first, latest literature will be analysed and second, most rec e nt projects will be examined in an own survey according to different criteria of huge contemporary importance based on an own literature survey and Internet research. | These analyses will make it possible to predict the near future of telework for different Countries as well as for European Union as a whole and compare it with latest development tendencies and figures. Furthermore the survey contains in the appendix an extensive overview of telework projects divided into Telematic Projects and Projects which are the basis for the own survey and predictions of telework in Europe, classified by the criteria set up in the previous chapters. Due to the extremely unstandardized presentation of the telework-projects, a typical drawback especially of an Internet recherche, it was necessary to make assumptions, i.e. to infer specific information that fit into the survey pattern and classification criteria by "reading between the lines". | |||||||||||||||||||
| Workpackage 2
Back to Top Study of User Needs Formal Description of User Requirements and their Derivations - D2.2 |
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| The information age stands for a fundamental change as the industrialisation was 200 years ago. Enterprises are facing to analyse chances and the challenge of global competition and also need to formulate the What and the How of their business. | For this reason the term Business Process Re-engineering or Redesign was introduced. In this connection the information technology opens solutions and possibilities for new organisational structures in companies. | |||||||||||||||||||
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| Most business processes were developed before modern computers and communications even existed but were often not recognised. The application of a certain technology usually automates or speeds up isolated components of an existing process. This creates communication problems within processes and impediments to process redesign and enhancement. These problems have to be solved by introducing telework in co-operative business processes. Therefore there is a close relationship between telework as a special form of an IT enabled organisation and business process oriented improvements. | Business Process Re-engineering can be divided into five steps. It is a
straightforward strategy with the major steps: develop the business vision and process
objectives, identify the processes to be redesign ed, understand and measure the existing
process, identify IT levers, design and build a prototype of a new process. In this deliverable we summarise the results of the first four steps of the Business Process Re-engineering strategy under the business vision: "implementing telework in co-operative business processes" at different pilot sites and for different application areas. |
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| These pilot sites and application areas are: VOLKSWAGEN AG - Pilot Site The Wolfsburg plant, participating in this project, is the largest car plant within the Volkswagen group. The application site focuses on the co-operative maintenance of modern production systems. Three new production lines with at each case 40 fully automated welding robots are installed and activated to the run of GOLF A 4 in September 1997. This production systems are completely networked enabled. Current activities on systems for controlling and monitoring of clutter data are the basis for the telework application site. Running intelligent production facilities, different highly skilled qualifications for controlling, steering and maintenance are needed. |
Such experts are rare and the kind of work does not suit to normal work-time schedules at all. The purpose of telework in this case is to make it possible to do maintenance work in advance and at any time and on any place, where these experts are and in co-operation with the service personal at the original premises. From there maintenance at VW AG is co-operative work. On the other hand there are similar machines, where the maintenance work can be done by the same group of people all over Europe. Here it is of interest to implement co-ordination services and a work-platform for telework with special focus on planning and time-management functionality. | |||||||||||||||||||
| TECNOTRON S.A. - Pilot Site TECNOTRON´s activities in systems implementation involve the interaction between technical, administrative and marketing personnel, working in geographical distant places. For example, a marketing agent and a project leader have to interact to prepare an offer to a client, or a service technician may have to fill several forms for accounting purposes, and this can happen while the three are many kilometres apart. On the other hand, some tasks (namely development) are performed by individual subcontractors working in their homes. |
As TECNOTRON is ISO 9001 certified, all its processes and workflow must be controlled. Furthermore, due to the high cost of specialised labour, it is vital to assign the right tasks to the right people, to keep them occupied, to be able to subcontract tasks on the fly, while maintaining projects on schedule and good customer service. These needs have to be satisfied by a telework system capable of managing the complex workflow arising in the company´s daily activity. | |||||||||||||||||||
| Stoilas Media & Design - Pilot Site Stoilas Media & Design is an advertising agency, which creates and implements marketing and advertising concepts for Greek companies focusing European markets. The processing of customer orders includes many co-operative business processes. For different design work steps, from layout to film creation to printing or production, activities are interactively executed at different locations by several people. Large printing or production orders will be worked by external specialised companies. Furthermore several tasks, for example design, are performed by employees and freelancers working in their home or own offices. As salesmen work in their countries, they need a direct link to company management to prepare offers and to attend customers. STOILAS is spread across cities such as Thessaloniki, Serres, Athens and Munich. Today 5 people work with this distributed system both at home and at their offices. |
Since high costs of specialised labour and since creative work can controlled in an easy way, it is necessary to manage co-operation between employees themselves, company management and external companies, to assign planned tasks to the right people, to manage task execution and to provide tools to interact. As STOILAS already built an Intranet between these locations, the application site will provide the additional co-ordination support for its telework business processes. This analysis in the context of Business Process Re-engineering lead to the user requirements, which will be considered by the COBIP-consortium during the development of a telework oriented workflow metamodel and the co-ordination services in workpackage 3 as well as the multimedia application and communication services in workpackage 4 as the fifth step of the Business Process Re-engineering strategy to fulfil all user requirements. | |||||||||||||||||||
| Workpackage 3 Back to
Top Development of a Business Process Model and Model Enactment Modelling Method - D3.1 Applications of telecommunications and information technologies impact many areas of
life. Especially telework is an application area, which still possesses a large growth
potenti al. The flexibility in the dimensions time and location of task execution makes it
an innovative work organization form. But the main obstacle of telework is the increasing
effort for process co-ordination and monitoring. Therefore, business process modeling and
workflow management is seen as a supporting methodology. |
Therefore in this document the process model for the modeling of production systems will be extended in a way that also activities of a technical office can be described with the help of uniform modeling elements. The developed COBIP business process model consists of active and passive elements. The active nodes presented by a rectangle describe a transformation in the model. The passive nodes (represented by a triangle) serve to manage the elements in the model. These nodes are linked by structure or communication edges. This developed business process model provides specific constructs for the modeling of workflow-oriented telework. A sample process modeled with the help of the COBIP business process model is shown in Figure below. | |||||||||||||||||||
 Figure: Example of the modelling method |
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| Workpackage 3 Back to
Top Development of a Business Process Model and Model Enactment Workflow Meta Model and Architectural Design of the Co-ordination Service Tool - D3.2 In the last years business processes proved to be a central object of consideration of organisational rearrangement despite a multitude of distinct reorganisation concepts. The hardening in terms of competition, caused by a progressive globalisation, an permanent reduction of innovation cycles and a trend to greater integration in the exchange of goods and services between vendors, companies and customers (key word: just in time) enforces a renunciation from traditional structures. The enterprises predominant functional organisation, identified by a high functional specialisation, is increasingly seen as contra-productive for successful business. The new organisation form according to business processes requires an assistance by active workflow management systems (WFMS). These systems work on the basis of defined processes and they control the flow of work between the employe es. Assistance for the planning and accomplishment of daily tasks, ease and amelioration of the information purchasing can be positive effects of a WFMS.Beside the ease of work for the staff because of the absorption of repeating tasks, the primary import ant objectives for the enterprise saving costs, amelioration of quality, economy of time and increased information transparency are to be mentioned. |
Because of reduced handling time for business processes lower costs can be assumed. Furthermore savings in the consumption of office supplies are possible, as the paperless handling is preferred. Expenses for the supply of documents can be confined to a minimum. Search functions enable the quick retrieval of information and documents. Business Process Reengineering (BPR) and an integrated business process management lead to workflows, optimised and almost adjusted from defects. With disclosure functions the process status can always be ascertained, i.e. who is involved in a task and who competent for the handli ng of an activity. On the one hand a good information management with the help of monitoring is possible and on the other hand the optimisation process can be assisted with the help of the achieved data on the status of the process. This document includes a n overview of the requirements and the state of the art in workflow-management. Basing on the requirements the constructs of the modelling method are defined. The refinement of business process models to workflows is documented. The applicability of the developed method is shown by modelling the processes of each pilot site. The conception of the generic architecture, gives an overview on the different modules like the core workflow management system, the time management and the scheduling functionality. The modules planned are shown in figure below. | |||||||||||||||||||
 Figure: Modules of the COBIP Workflow Management System |
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| Workpackage 3 Back to
Top Development of a Business Process Model and Model Enactment Early Prototype of the Workflow Management System - D3.3 Telework is considered as an innovative work organisation form for new decentralised structures. But the increasing effort for co-ordination and monitoring is seen to be an obstacle of co-operative telework. Therefore workflow management will be used as a supporting methodology for the co-ordination of telework. In this paper, we will describe the basis functionality of the core workflow management system. |
This workflow management system has sp ecific co-ordination, planning and time-management functionality for the support of co-operative telework. The system is built using Internet-technology and is using platform-independent WWW-software for the user interface. One of the core modules the workflow editor is shown in figure below. | |||||||||||||||||||
 Figure: The workflow editor of the COBIP Workflow-Management-System |
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COBIP - Telework Co-ordination Services for Co-operative Business Processes - UR 4002 |
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| Copyright 1998 COBIP | [email protected] |
| Status: 16.01.1999 |