SUPER (Semantics Utilised for Process management within and between EnteRprises)
The major objective of SUPER is to raise Business Process Management (BPM) to the business level, where it belongs, from the IT level where it mostly resides now. This objective requires that BPM is accessible at the level of semantics of business experts.
Business Process Management focuses on managing the execution of IT-supported business operations from a business expert?s process view rather than from a technical perspective. The underlying motivation for BPM is that organizations need to continuously align their running business processes, as executed within multiple heterogeneous systems, with the required processes as derived from business needs. BPM has gained significant attention in both research and industry, and a range of BPM tools are available. However, the degree of mechanization in BPM is currently very limited. The major obstacle preventing a coherent view on business processes is that the business processes are not accessible to machine reasoning. Additionally, businesses cannot query their process space by logical expressions, e.g. in order to identify activities relevant to comply with regulations.
Founded on ontologies Semantic Web technology provides scalable methods and tools for the machine-readable representation of knowledge. Semantic Web Services (SWS) make use of Semantic Web technology to support the automated discovery, substitution, composition, and execution of software components (Web Services). BPM is a natural application for Semantic Web and SWS technology, because the latter provide large-scale, standardized knowledge representation techniques for executable artefacts.
The ambitous goal of the project is to combine Semantic Web services and Business Process Management, and develop one consolidated technology.
The project consortium listed below is a balanced blend of software vendors, service providers and research teams form all over Europe:
- SAP AG (Germany)
- eTel (Austria)
- IBIS Prof. Thome AG (Germany)
- IBM Research (Switzerland)
- IDS Scheer (Germany)
- Isoco (Spain)
- Leopold-Franzens University Innsbruck (Austria)
- MIP ? Politecnico di Milano (Italy)
- National University of Ireland, Galway (Ireland)
- Nexcom (Bulgaria)
- NIWA (Austria)
- Ontotext Lab, Sirma (Bulgaria)
- Open University (UK)
- Telefonica (Spain)
- The Poznan University of Economics (Poland)
- TU Eindhoven (Netherlands)
- University of Stuttgart (Germany)
- Telekomunikacja Polska (Polska)
- CEFRIEL (Italy)
SUPER Management Team:
Technical Project Coordinator:
Dr. Elmar Dorner SAP Reseach CEC Karlsruhe SAP AG, Germany
E-mail: [email protected]
Project Coordinator:
Klaus-Dieter Platte SAP AG / Platte Consult, Germany
E-mail: [email protected]
Scientific Director:
Prof. Dr. Frank Leymann Institute of Architecture of Application Systems University Stuttgart, Germany
E-mail: frank.leymann@informatik.uni-stuttgart.de