BEM

Objectives

The goal of the BEM project is to develop and validate a new IT approach to manage unexpected events in the transportation and distribution sectors. Such events can deeply affect physical and organisational flows, requiring complex process re-alignment and re-optimisation to bring the system back into normal operation.

BEM proposes a process management solution built on top of state-of-the-art artificial intelligence engines and fitted with temporal coordination capabilities. The goal is to minimise the negative consequences of incidents and simplify flow management.

Results

The BEM tool is deployable in logistic environments and integrates the following key elements:

• a process manager based on events and integrating temporal coordination aspects,
• the description of logistic processes using specific business rules,
• a method for describing the management of unexpected events.

For the project, CETIC notably produced a goal-oriented requirements analysis using the KAOS approach and the Objectiver tool, as well as a tool-supported methodology to describe the different processes, activities, events, exceptions and resources involved in a specific application domain. This methodology includes:

• a meta-model to structure this type of information,
• an interview template to discuss with stakeholders and capture this information, as well as specific business rules and constraints to consider,
• a tool support based on YAWL to facilitate the encoding and transmission of these specifications to the intelligent reasoning engine.

Added-value

BEM provides enterprises with:

• Minimal detrimental fall-out resulting from accidents,
• An affordable yet optimised implementation of intelligent workflow management to solve complex problems and deal with unexpected situations.