Reinforcing FLEXibility of SMEs by dynamic business process management

Achieving business flexibility is a necessary condition for the business development of SMEs. ReFLEX project is aiming to perform a research on the new model for the description of dynamic business processes, and to develop an ad hoc BPM solution tailored to the needs of SMEs which will help them REspond more quickly to changing customer requirements than their larger and less agile competitors, and be more FLEXible, thus providing them with clear benefits and making their smaller size an advantage.

The vision and the goal of the ReFLEX project? What is BPM?

Business process management (BPM) is a class of software that treats processes as assets that directly contribute to enterprise performance by driving operational excellence and business agility. 
The dynamic BPM means that the business processes will be aware of the changes in the environment and will be able to adapt themselves accordingly.

The ReFLEX project will revolutionize the ways of dynamic business process management by developing the methodology and a new Dynamic BPM Model which will describe business processes and will take into account modelling of events that can lead to the changes in a business process execution, as well as developing a Dynamic BPM Editor, for using the functionality of the model, developing a set of methods and a tool for recognizing the need for a change in a business process (CEP engine), and for calculating and recommending (Recommender) what kind of changes should be performed, and developing a novel workflow engine (Dynamic workflow engine) that will be able to perform changes in the running business process instance.

The story
Company X has a task to transfer two groups of tourists, group1 from city B and group 2 from city C to a ski resort (A) and another group (group 3) from that ski resort to the airport. 
The selected strategy is to use a van for the group 1, since it is a small group of tourists, in order to transfer them to place C, where they will be joined with the group 2 and transferred in a bus to the ski resort. The group 3 will be transferred in the same bus to the airport.

The problem
At 11PM a heavy snowing is starting nearby ski resort C. It causes breaking the traffic between C and A. The bus1 arrives too late at C for picking up passengers for the airplane.

ReFLEX solution implies:
- the possibility to get information about the weather conditions in the right moment;
- the ability to analyse a new situation in order to find the best solution;
- the ability to change existing process, by taking into account all existing constraints.

ReFLEX project solution should be tailored to the needs of SMEs and help them REspond more quickly to changing customer requirements and be more FLEXible.

Project type
  • FP7
Country of the coordinating institution
Serbia
Acronym
REFLEX
Geographical focus
  • General/no specific focus
Scientifc field / Thematic focus
  • Engineering and Technology
Runtime
April 2011 - March 2013

Entry created by Desiree Pecarz on April 13, 2013
Modified on August 13, 2013