23.10.06 22:35 Age: 3 yrs
CEBPI goes Asia: zur Muehlen to give BPM Standards talks in Tokyo, Taipei, Singapore
Dr. Michael zur Muehlen
Dr. Michael zur Muehlen, an assistant professor of Information Systems at Stevens Institute of Technology and director of the Center of Excellence in Business Process Innovation, will lead a series of three workshops on Business Process Management standards in Tokyo, Taipei, and Singapore between October 30th and November 3rd, 2006. The workshops are organized by the Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC), a technology standards body in the Business Process Management area. zur Muehlen was elected life fellow of the WfMC in 2004 for his contributions to the area of workflow standards.
́BPM Standards allow organizations to share process definitions across tools and to link different process management systems within and across organizations.î said zur Muehlen. ́Business Process Management technology has reached a level of maturity that allows organizations to expose process services via the Internet. This allows the dynamic assembly of trading partner networks, and the integration of external process participants with less effort and greater flexibility than previously possible.î
The workshops combine a business track and a technology track. The business track, headed by zur Muehlen, provides an introduction to the area of BPM, discusses the business value of BPM technology and the use of process management for risk and compliance management in the context of Sarbanes-Oxley and Basel II. The technology track will introduce users and vendors to the XML process definition language (XPDL), the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) and other complementary standards in the area of BPM and the service-oriented architecture.
The workshops are sponsored by a consortium of software companies in the Business Process Management area ñ Fujitsu, Global 360, TIBCO, Bizman, FlowRing, as well as the Japanese Business Process Management Association (J-BPM).
́There is considerable confusion in the marketplace whether process management is a technical or a management issueî added zur Muehlen. ́Understanding and improving processes is essential for organizations that have to document their compliance with regulations such as the Sarbanes-Oxley act or HIPAA. This is not just a matter of picking a technology platform and implementing a process support system, but process management has to be embedded in the organization and reports on process goals and performance should be a core ingredient of managerial decision making.î
The Center of Excellence in Business Process Innovation at the Howe School of Technology Management conducts applied research projects on the interplay between business processes and the organization. Managing process risk and compliance is one of the centerís core research streams. Other areas of study include the effect of corporate and local culture on process design and execution, the setup and operation of BPM centers of excellence in organizations, dynamic task allocation in virtual organizations, and the monitoring and control of process work.
Fujitsu and TIBCO are software contributors to the BPM laboratory at the Center of Excellence, which maintains a state-of-the-art lab infrastructure with several process modeling and automation tools.
