Conversational CaseBased Reasoning Support for Business Process Management

1
Conversational Case-Based Reasoning Support for
Business Process Management

• Barbara Weber, Univ. of Innsbruck
• Werner Wild, Evolution Consulting

2
Overview

• Motivation
• Integrated Process Lifecycle Support
• Overview
• Performing Ad-hoc Changes Using CCBR
• Deriving Evolutionary Changes
• Case-Base Migration
• Summary and Outlook

3

• Motivation

4
Motivation

• Growing interest in aligning information systems
  in a process-oriented way
• Early attempts unsuccessful due to lack of
  flexibility
• bypassing the system necessary
• limited traceability
• knowledge is lost, no reuse in similar situations

5
ExamplePatient Treatment Process
Exception

• Additional Lab Test
• Patient suffers from diabetes
• Patient is older than 40 years

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ExamplePatient Treatment Process

• Semantical knowledge about the reasons for and
  the context of the deviation are stored in the
  case-base

Case-Base
7
ExamplePatient Treatment Process
Exception
8
ExamplePatient Treatment Process
Exception
Diabetes
9

• Integrated
• Process Life Cycle Support
• An Overview

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Integrated Process Life Cycle Support
Make appointment
Enter order
Schema S
Examine patient
Make appointment
Inform patient
Create Process Type Schema
?
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Integrated Process Life Cycle Support
Make appointment
Enter order
Schema S
Examine patient
Make appointment
Inform patient
Create Process Type Schema
Instantiation
?
?
Process Execution
Process Instance I
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Integrated Process Life Cycle Support
Make appointment
Enter order
Schema S
Examine patient
Make appointment
Inform patient
Create Process Type Schema
Instantiation
?
?
Process Execution
Process Instance I
Ad-hoc changed Process Instance I
?
CCBR
Change Process Instance
13
Integrated Process Life Cycle Support
Make appointment
Enter order
Schema S
Examine patient
Make appointment
Inform patient
Create Process Type Schema
Instantiation
?
?
Process Execution
Process Instance I
?
Ad-hoc changed Process Instance I
CCBR
Change Process Instance
? Notify Process Engineer
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Integrated Process Life Cycle Support
Schema S
X
Make appointment
A
B
D
C
E
Enter order
Schema S
Examine patient
Make appointment
Inform patient
Change Process Type Schema
?
Create Process Type Schema
Instantiation
?
?
Process Execution
Process Instance I
?
Ad-hoc changed Process Instance I
CCBR
Change Process Instance
? Notify Process Engineer
15

• Integrated
• Process Life Cycle Support
• Performing Ad-hoc Changes Using CCBR-Assistant

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Case Representation

• Represents an ad-hoc modification of one or more
  process instances
• Consists of
• a textual problem description
• a set of question-answer pairs (reasons for and
  context of the deviation)
• a solution part (set of change operations)

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Adding a New Case

Title
Description
Question-Answer Pairs
Question
Answer
Patient has diabetes?
Yes
What is the patients age?
gt 40
Actions
Operation Type
Subject
Parameters
sInsert
LabTest
S, PreparePatient, Examine Patient
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Retrieving Similar Cases With CCBR
CCBR System
initiate CCBR dialog
Rank
questions
Retrieve
cases
Problem
description
Case
Base
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Retrieving Similar Cases With CCBR
CCBR System
initiate CCBR dialog
Rank
questions
Retrieve
cases
Ranked questions
Problem
description
Case
Base
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Retrieving Similar Cases With CCBR
CCBR System
initiate CCBR dialog
Rank
questions
Retrieve
cases
Ranked questions
Problem
description
Answer selected question
User
Case
Base
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Retrieving Similar Cases With CCBR
CCBR System
initiate CCBR dialog
Rank
questions
Retrieve
cases
Ranked questions
Problem
description
Answer selected question
User
Ranked cases
Case
Base
22
Retrieving Similar Cases
Overall Ratings for Case 1
Select Operation
Insert
Reputation Score
25
LabTest
Select Activity/Edge
Positive Feedback
83
Positive
30
Answer
Question
Negative
5
Patient has diabetes? Whats the patients age?

Yes gt40
Recent Ratings for Case 1
Past 7 Days
Past Month
Past 6 Months
positive
25
30
0
Case ID
Score
Title
Reputation Score
neutral
1
1
0
1
100
Perform lab test
25
negative
2
5
0
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• Integrated
• Process Life Cycle Support
• Deriving Evolutionary Changes

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Deriving Evolutionary Changes
25

• Integrated
• Process Life Cycle Support
• Case-Base Migration

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Migrating the Case-Base

• Case-Base has to be migrated to a new version too
• Cases whose solution part gets integrated into
  the new schema version are no longer needed
• Only cases whose solution part is not reflected
  in the new schema version are migrated

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Migrating the Case-Base
Process Type Level
Schema Version S S(T,1)
Schema Version S S(T,2)
Lab test
Process Type Change ?T
patData
patData
sc1 age gt 40 ? diabetes yes
X
A
C
D
E
B
A
B
C
D
E
?T1 sInsert(S, X, C, E), deleteAct(S, D)
?T2 deleteAct(S, F)
CCBR
Enter order
Examine patient
Deliver report
Make appointment
Prepare Patient
Enter order
Make appointment
Prepare Patient
sc2 default
Examine patient
?T cInsert(S, Lab test, Prepare Patient,
Examine Patient, sc1)
Case-Base Migration
cb cbT,2
cb cbT,1
c4 (..., sInsert(S, Y, A, B)), c5 (...,
deleteAct(S, D)) c6 (..., deleteAct(S, E),
sInsert(S, X, C, D)) c7 (...,
sInsert(S, Y, A, B)) c8 (..., deleteAct(S,
B))
c1 (..., sInsert(S, X, C, D)), freqS(c1)
48 c2 (..., sInsert(S, X, C, D)), freqS(c2)
23 c3 (..., sInsert(S, X, C, D)), freqS(c3)
33 c4 (..., sInsert(S, Y, A, B)), freqS(c4)
5 c5 (..., deleteAct(S, D)), freqS(c5)
60 c6 (..., deleteAct(S, E),
sInsert(S, Y, A, B)), freqS(c6) 2
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• Summary and Outlook

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Summary

• Application of CCBR-Assistant to Process
  Management
• Reduces the strict separation between build-time
  and run-time
• Supports just-in-time updates to the process
  model
• Allows for an agile approach to process
  management
• Continuous Learning
• handle modifications when they arise and memorize
  them for later reuse
• quick incorporation of results of the learning
  process into process execution
• continuously close the gap between the modeled
  and the observed execution behavior

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Summary

• Delays the precise modeling of business processes
  until
• requirements are more clear
• need for more details becomes obvious
• clear business value can be identified
  (just-in-time modeling)
• User Involvement
• Process users are empowered to deviate from the
  predefined process model
• User involvement when full automation is not
  feasible

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Summary

• Approach for the integrated process lifecycle
  support
• support of ad-hoc changes
• memorization and reuse of these changes
• derivation of process type changes

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Summary

• CBRFlow
• CCBR is used for supporting the reuse of ad-hoc
  changes
• DLE (Dynamic Logic Engine)
• DLE is a a user-friendly programming environment
  for domain experts (e.g., in the logistics
  industry), developed by the Austrian software
  company VISION-FLOW.
• CCBR is used for the memorization and the reuse
  of knowledge about exceptions
• ADEPT CBRTool
• CCBR for enabling integrated process lifecycle
  support
• Implementation of an integrated prototype

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Outlook

• Security
• Applications Logistics Industry, Medical

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Thanks for your attention!

• Questions???