Genesis Dynamic Collaborative Business Process Formulation Based on Business Goals and Criteria

This technical paper discusses the architectural design and implementation details of Genesis - a novel Web application which formulates business process definitions dynamically, given a user business goal and underlying business criteria (e.g. total order cost, type of sourcing methods, etc.). Guided by an algorithm that references a hierarchical ontology file containing business process task decomposition, Genesis traverses through the ontology and dynamically produces two types of output: (1) a graphical breakdown of task sequences and decompositions required to fulfill the user´s business goals, and (2) an abstract BPEL file containing the control flow structures, and Web service invocation points needed to execute the collaborative business processes in a service-oriented environment. The outputs demonstrate the potential of Genesis as a standalone module which can provide dynamic capabilities, thereby complementing current service-oriented architecture (SOA) business-to-business (B2B) information systems which require hard-coded, inflexible business process definitions. An online demonstration of Genesis is available at http://imss.simtech.a-star.edu.sg/Genesis/.