Real-Time Process Adaptation: A Context-Aware Replanning Approach

Abstract

Complexity and dynamism of day-to-day activities are inextricably linked, thus the need for constant adaptation to address emerging demands has grown. Process adaptation is the action of customizing a process instance to make it applicable to a particular situation. However, unplanned conditions may occur at any time during process execution. So, the design of a complete process model has given place to a flexible design based on reuse and adaptation. This paper addresses the problem of dynamic adaptation within a process-aware information system (IS). On top of a theory for context-aware ISs, we argue that an unexpected situation can be characterized by a number of known contextual elements and could be used to automate the decision of replanning the process flow in a specific instance, in order to preserve the process strategy. The solution was evaluated in real setting observational studies in the domains of oil and gas and air traffic control.