DBIS doctoral student Tobias Jahn, together with Philipp Hühn and Maximilian Förster from the Institute for Business Analytics, received the Best Student Paper Award at the 19th International Conference on Design Science Research in Information Systems and Technology (DESRIST 2024) for his paper "Wasn't Expecting that - Using Abnormality as a Key to Design a Novel User-Centric Explainable AI Method":

Tobias Jahn, Philipp Hühn, Maximilian Förster
Wasn't Expecting That - Using Abnormality as a Key to Design a Novel User-Centric Explainable AI Method
19th International Conference on Design Science Research in Information Systems and Technology (DESRIST 2024)

About the content of the award-winning work: The opacity of AI systems is a major obstacle to their use. Explainable AI (XAI) methods that automatically generate counterfactual explanations for AI decisions can increase user confidence in AI systems. Here, abnormality of explanations is an essential property that is not yet sufficiently taken into account by existing XAI methods. Against this background, a new approach for generating counterfactual explanations based on the abnormality of features was developed as part of this research work. In this paper, the approach was demonstrated in a realistic environment and its effectiveness was subjected to a user test. The results show that the developed approach generates explanations that are both more trustworthy and more helpful in explaining the factual situation.

DESRIST, which was held this year in Trollhättan, Sweden, is both renowned and rich in tradition in the field of business informatics. Different disciplines, united by a focus on design science research, are dealt with in different tracks.

Burkard completed his doctorate at DBIS on December 22, 2022 on the topic of "Data Understanding in Predictive Maintenance Applications in the Age of Industry 4.0". He was supervised by Prof. Dr. Manfred Reichert and Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Pryss.

A total of eight former doctoral students of Prof. Reichert now hold a professorship at a university or university of applied sciences.

Marius Breitmayer, Lisa Arnold, Marko Pejic, Manfred Reichert: Transforming Object-centric Process Models into BPMN 2.0 Models in the PHILharmonicFlow Framework. M. Weske, J. Michael (Hrsg.): Modellierung 2024, Lecture Notes in Informatics LNI 83, März 2024.

The Modeling Conference is the central scientific event of the Modeling Committee of the German Informatics Society. This community has been meeting for more than twenty years to discuss modeling issues across the entire spectrum of computer science. These include fundamentals, methods, techniques, tools, domains and applications.

Combining Ecological Momentary Assessment and Mobile Crowdsensing in eHealth and mHealth

at Ulm University, Germany. The DBIS team is pleased to congratulate Robin on his successful PhD defense (Dr. rer. nat.) and wishes him all the best for his future career.

Robin was a joint doctoral student of the Institute for Databases and Information Systems (Director: Prof. Dr. Manfred Reichert) and the Institute of Psychology / Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy. His dissertation is anchored in the Digital Health focus area of both institutions. His academic supervisors were Prof. Dr. Manfred Reichert, Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Pryss, and Prof. Dr. Harald Baumeister.

Robin Kraft's interdisciplinary work is a very good example of the close cooperation between the Departments of Computer Science and Psychology at the University of Ulm.

Members of the PhD committee:

• Prof. Dr. Matthias Tichy (Ulm University, Chairman)
• Prof. Dr. Manfred Reichert (Ulm University, Supervisor & Referee)
• Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Pryss (University of Wuerzburg, Co-Supervisor & Referee)
• Prof. Dr. Oliver Amft (University of Freiburg, External Referee)
• Prof. Dr. Fabian Prasser (Charité Berlin, External Referee)
• Prof. Dr. Harald Baumeister (Universität Ulm, Committee Member)
• Prof. Dr. Franz Hauck (Universität Ulm, Committee Member)

Legacy software systems are often used to support business processes, which are outdated and hide the process logic in the code. Vital process adaptations to changing circumstances are generally not adequately supported. The aim of the ProcMAPE project is to enable (partially) autonomous, data-driven adaptations of object-centric processes in software systems. In order to realize this flexibility with the required robustness, efficiency and traceability for users, a holistic approach is required, which is summarized in the project under the acronym MAPE: (1) Monitoring, (2) Analysis, (3) Planning and (4) Execution. The aim is to achieve (1) continuous monitoring and (2) the analysis of running processes, (3) the derivation, evaluation and planning of necessary process adaptations and (4) the technical system implementation of these adaptations (e.g. by adapting program code, database schemas, and electronic user forms). The overall goal is the development and implementation of an automated solution approach for monitoring and analyzing ongoing processes as well as the planning and technical implementation (i.e. execution) of necessary process and code adaptations.

Recently, with SoftProc the two partners successfully completed another project in the SME Innovative program with SoftProc.

The ZEUS Workshop focuses on discussing fresh research ideas in computer science, presenting ongoing work, and establishing a scientific network for young researchers from the DACH region

At ZEUS'24, there were 13 presentations on topics such as process automation, process mining & monitoring, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and privacy & security. The Institute of Databases and Information Systems (DBIS) contributed with 4 presentations and a keynote at the workshop.

The 18 participants discussed ideas from different thematic areas and developed novel solutions for emerging challenges.

A big thanks also goes to this year's sponsors, without whom the event would have been impossible.

Context-based Probabilistic Prediction of the Driving Behavior 
of Surrounding Traffic Participants

at Ulm University, Germany. The DBIS team is pleased to congratulate Florian on his successful PhD defense (Dr. rer. nat.) and wishes him all the best for his future career. 
Florian was an external doctoral student of Mercedes-Benz AG at the Institute of Databases and Information Systems (DBIS). Florian’s PhD advisor and promotor was Prof. Dr. Manfred Reichert. The external reviewer for the doctoral colloquium was Prof. Dr.-Ing. Steven Peters from the Institute of Automotive Engineering at TU Darmstadt. The dissertation was also co-supervised by Dr. Jochen Hipp and Dr. Joachim Herbst from Mercedes-Benz AG.
Florian is the sixth doctoral student at Mercedes-Benz AG to successfully complete his doctorate at DBIS under the supervision of Prof. Reichert.

Members of the PhD committee: 
•    Prof. Dr. Frank Kargl (Ulm University, Chairman)
•    Prof. Dr. Manfred Reichert (Ulm University, Supervisor & Referee)
•    Prof. Dr. Steven Peters (TU Darmstadt, External Referee)
•    Prof. Dr. Hans Kestler (Ulm University, Committee Member)
•    Prof. Dr. Friedhelm Schwenker (Ulm University, Committee Member)

Engineering Process Enactment and Coordination in Data-Centric Process Management Systems

at Ulm University, Germany. The DBIS team is pleased to congratulate Sebastian on his successful PhD defense (Dr. rer. nat.) and wishes him all the best for his future career.

Sebastian’s PhD advisor and promotor was Prof. Dr. Manfred Reichert. Prof. Dr. Mathias Weske (Hasso-Plattner-Institut Potsdam, University of Potsdam) acted as external examiner at the doctoral colloquium.  Until 2022 Prof. Weske was chairman of the steering committee of the BPM conference series.

Sebastian carried out his research work in the PHILharmonicFlows. He has also made a significant contribution to setting up the DBIS Business Process Modelling Lab and has contributed to several third-party funded projects (BMWK, State of Baden-Württemberg).

Members of the PhD committee:

• Prof. Dr. Matthias Tichy (Ulm University, Chairman)
• Prof. Dr. Manfred Reichert (Ulm University, Promotor & Referee)
• Prof. Dr. Mathias Weske (Hasso-Plattner-Institute, University of Potsdam, External Referee)
• Prof. Dr. Birte Glimm (Ulm University, Committee Member)
• Prof. Dr. Mathias Klier (Ulm University, Committee Member)

The goal of the project was the development of software-supported procedures that "observe" users during the execution of a process with the software and write this information in fine granularity in an event stream or an event log. With the resulting online process analysis, dedicated processes are determined retrogradely from a running application and the use of the application is documented across different users, locations or points in time.

Scientific and technical starting point

The common approaches to obtaining models for business processes have in common that the software systems to be analyzed want to transfer as accurate an event stream as possible to a process mining tool. In 2016, the IEEE defined the XES (Extensible Event Stream) standard format for event streams. This standard is supported by common process mining tools and allows, among other things, free extensibility using custom extensions to map specifics of the company or its business processes, as well as specifics of the software systems and to transfer the event streams to the process mining tool. For the large standard systems with constant data models (e.g. SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle E-Business Suite), there are already preconfigured export routes that extract all the necessary event stream information from the application for a classic procurement process, for example.

However, there are no simple export routes for standard applications or industry solutions, let alone for individual software. Since in most cases the individual software solution does not necessarily use a workflow or process engine in the background that is capable of providing helpful audit data with just a few extensions, the only option in many cases is to look at the changes in the data model. However, as discussed above, this involves a lot of time wasted on interviews, analyses and assumptions.

Key results

As part of the research and development work, it became clear that the greatest innovation within the work packages lies in the identification of processes based on user interactions, identification of the "real" data model and the DataActivityLog. As long as a process description with BPMN or PHILharmonicFlows can be created from this, the further innovations in the area of conformity and compliance were only minor. For this reason, the focus in the further course of the project was much more on high quality in the semi-automatic recognition of the business processes implemented in the application.

PITSS

The results and findings achieved in the project will be incorporated into the upcoming release of the PITSS.CON product and will therefore be available to the customer base as an update or for new customers as a stand-alone product.

DBIS

DBIS supported PITSS in the project with the latest scientific and research findings and contributed its expertise in the field of business process management to the project. It also designed and evaluated the algorithms and procedures for determining the conformity and compliance of implemented processes with a given target process model or with existing compliance rules. DBIS has also published the particularly original results of its research work in the SoftProc project in prestigious publications and presented them at 12 international conferences and workshops.

On 22 December 2022, Burkhard Hoppenstedt successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled

Data understanding in predictive maintenance applications
in the age of Industry 4.0

at Ulm University, Germany. The DBIS team is pleased to congratulate Burkhard on his very successful PhD defence (Dr. rer. nat.) and wishes him all the best for his future career.

Burkhard's supervisors and referees were Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Pryss and Prof. Dr. Manfred Reichert. Prof. Myra Spiliopoulou 

from the Research Lab "Knowledge Management & Discovery" at Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg participated in the doctoral colloquium as an external referee.

The dissertation project was carried out in cooperation with ATR Software GmbH .

Members of the PhD committee:

• Prof. Dr. Hans Kestler (Universität Ulm, Vorsitz und Protokoll)
• Prof. Dr. Manfred Reichert (Universität Ulm, Betreuer & Gutachter)
• Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Pryss (Universität Würzburg, Betreuer & Gutachter)
• Prof. Myra Spiliopoulou (Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg, Externe Gutachterin)
• Prof. Dr. Matthias Tichy (Universität Ulm, Wahlmitglied)
• Prof. Dr. Franz Hauck (Universität Ulm, Wahlmitglied)

A Checklist to Support Knowledge Workers in Implementing Robotic Process Automation Projects

at Ulm University, Germany. The DBIS team is pleased to congratulate Judith on his very successful PhD defense (Dr. rer. nat.) and wishes him all the best for his future career.

Judith’s PhD advisor and promotor was Prof. Dr. Manfred Reichert. Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Pryss (University of Wuerzburg) acted as external examiner at the doctoral colloquium.   

Members of the PhD committee:

• Prof. Dr. Hans Kestler (Universität Ulm, Vorsitz und Protokoll)
• Prof. Dr. Manfred Reichert (Universität Ulm, Betreuer & Gutachter)
• Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Pryss (Universität Würzburg, externer Gutachter)
• Prof. Dr. Matthias Tichy (Universität Ulm, Wahlmitglied)
• Prof. Dr. Steffen Zimmermann (Universität Ulm, Wahlmitglied)

Due to globalization, small and medium-sized companies are coming under more and more pressure to adapt. However, how can small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) succeed in this digital transformation process? The DASU - Transfer Centre for Digitalisation, Analytics & Data Science Ulm provides scientific support in this context. DASU was established in 2021 by the University of Ulm, the University of Applied Sciences Ulm (THU), the Ulm Chamber of Industry and Commerce (IHK), and the City of Ulm. Now DASU has been awarded as a lighthouse project within the framework of the regional development concept of the Swabian Confederation and provided with funding in the millions. Money for this comes from both the EU and the state of Baden-Württemberg. Sandra Zimmermann, Managing Director of DASU, Professor Manfred Reichert, Professor von Schwerin and Professor Urban, all members of the DASU board, are correspondingly delighted.

The funding success was announced on 15 December 2022, in the Stuttgart State Parliament with the official handover of the funding decision by Economics Minister Dr. Nicole Hoffmeister-Kraut. The lighthouse project is embedded in the so-called RegioWIN2030 competition of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). The programme shall strengthen regional competitiveness through innovation and sustainability. The total funding amount is around 4.9 million euros, of which 3.9 million euros come from the ERDF and 980,000 euros from the Ministry of Economics, Labour and Tourism of the State of Baden-Württemberg. "We are very pleased about this successful application. In the future, this will make it even easier for us to make companies from the region fit for the digital transformation and the disruptive challenges of our time," says Professor Manfred Reichert from the University of Ulm. The head of the Institute for Databases and Information Systems is also chairman of the DASU board.

A dedicated "Digital Lab" visualises innovative AI solutions and prototypes

"The Transfer Centre is based on close collaboration between business and science. It offers research and transfer cooperation for companies, data science consulting, but also information events and workshops on the topics of data analytics and data science," explains Professor Reinhold von Schwerin. The expert for data science and machine learning represents Ulm University of Applied Sciences (THU) on the DASU board. A "Digital Lab" will also help to visually present innovative AI solutions and prototypes and make them tangible. "With the DASU, we have created a central contact point for companies with data science and analytics issues. With the RegioWIN funding, the DASU is now being thought of on a much larger scale and is more strongly oriented towards SMEs," says Petra Engstler-Karrasch, Chief Executive Officer of the Ulm Chamber of Commerce and Industry (IHK).

The overarching goal of the DASU - Transfer Centre for Digitisation, Analytics & Data Science Ulm is to sustainably optimise the transfer of knowledge in order to secure the region's future viability in the long term. So that no more data treasures are lost and the regional economy remains internationally competitive. As a beacon for data-based digitalisation, DASU is showing the way here. "We would like to express our gratitude for the support of the EU and the state of Baden-Württemberg. At the same time, we see the funding as another sign that we in Ulm and the region are on the right path to successfully shaping the future," affirms Ulm's Lord Mayor Gunter Czisch.

About the DASU

The Transfer Centre for Digitisation, Analytics & Data Science Ulm (DASU) was founded in 2021 by the University of Ulm, the Ulm University of Technology (THU), the Ulm Chamber of Industry and Commerce (IHK), and the City of Ulm as a non-profit foundation. The mission: to strengthen the transfer of knowledge between science and the companies of the entire region and to bundle and reuse resources.

The DASU works in a multidisciplinary way. The disciplines represented are computer science, mathematics/statistics, medicine and economics/engineering, as well as human factors, human-technology interaction, digital law and occupational psychology. Around 40 professors from THU and the University of Ulm are now involved in the Transfer Centre.

The foundation's basic assets of 200,000 euros were donated by the Ulm Chamber of Commerce and Industry (IHK) and the City of Ulm. The foundation companies from the region include Boehringer Ingelheim Pharma, Hensoldt Sensors, Kreissparkasse Biberach, Liebherr Digital Development Center, RAM Stiftung Ulm, Rentschler Biopharma, SWU Stadtwerke Ulm/Neu-Ulm and Wieland-Werke.

Engineering a Flexible Data-centric Process Management System

at Ulm University, Germany. The DBIS team is pleased to congratulate Kevin on his very successful PhD defense (Dr. rer. nat.) and wishes him all the best for his future career.

Kevin’s PhD advisor and promotor was  Prof. Dr. Manfred Reichert. Prof. Dr. Massimo Mecella (Sapienza Università di Roma, Italy) acted as external examiner at the doctoral colloquium. 

Kevin carried out his research work in the PHILharmonicFlows. Furthermore, he has contributed significantly to the development of the DBIS export courses for the Bachelor's degree programme "Economics".

Members of the PhD committee:

• Prof. Dr. Jacobo Torán (Universität Ulm, Vorsitz und Protokoll)
• Prof. Dr. Manfred Reichert (Universität Ulm, Betreuer & Gutachter)
• Prof. Dr. Massimo Mecella (Sapienza Università di Roma, externer Gutachter)
• Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Pryss (Universität Würzburg, externes Wahlmitglied)
• Prof. Dr. Franz Hauck (Universität Ulm,Wahlmitglied)
• Prof. Dr. Matthias Tichy (Universität Ulm, Wahlmitglied)

Irene Barba, Andrés Jiménez-Ramírez, Manfred Reichert, Carmelo Del Valle, and Barbara Weber: Flexible runtime support of business processes under rolling planning horizons. Expert Syst. Appl. 177: 114857 (2021) (Link to ScienceDirect)

Abstract

This work has been motivated by the needs we discovered when analyzing real-world processes from the healthcare domain that have revealed high flexibility demands and complex temporal constraints. When trying to model these processes with existing languages, we learned that none of the latter was able to fully address these needs. This motivated us to design TConDec-R, a declarative process modeling language enabling the specification of complex temporal constraints. Enacting business processes based on declarative process models, however, introduces a high complexity due to the required optimization of objective functions, the handling of various temporal constraints, the concurrent execution of multiple process instances, the management of cross-instance constraints, and complex resource allocations. Consequently, advanced user support through optimized schedules is required when executing the instances of such models. In previous work, we suggested a method for generating an optimized enactment plan for a given set of process instances created from a TConDec-R model. However, this approach was not applicable to scenarios with uncertain demands in which the enactment of newly created process instances starts continuously over time, as in the considered healthcare scenarios. Here, the process instances to be planned within a specific timeframe cannot be considered in isolation from the ones planned for future timeframes. To be able to support such scenarios, this article significantly extends our previous work by generating optimized enactment plans under a rolling planning horizon. We evaluate the approach by applying it to a particularly challenging healthcare process scenario, i.e., the diagnostic procedures required for treating patients with ovarian carcinoma in a Woman Hospital. The application of the approach to this sophisticated scenario allows avoiding constraint violations and effectively managing shared resources, which contributes to reduce the length of patient stays in the hospital.

After there had already been a ZDF programme – 37 Grad – with several DBIS team members in July 2022, there was now further filming for television at the beginning of August 2022 - this time with the broadcaster ProSieben for its popular magazine Galileo. Pia, Manfred, Fabian and Jens gave insights into current research work, especially technology solutions in the context of auditory high sensitivity. All four DBIS team members had a lot of fun during the ProSieben filming.

The stream is currently freely available in the ProSieben Mediathek.

Dirk Fahland, Chiara Ghidini, Marlon Dumas, and Manfred Reichert (2022): Special issue: BPM 2020 Selected Papers in Foundations and Engineering. Information Systems, 109: 102093

Background. The annual BPM conference is the premium forum for researchers, practitioners and developers in the field of BPM, covering all aspects of BPM research and practice, including theory, management, applications and technology. While BPM as a scientific field and as an industry practice has significantly matured and increased its span, it is not yet an established organizational management discipline, along other disciplines such as project management or risk management. Fostering true innovation rather than only incremental change, capitalizing on big data opportunities and accounting for processes that are increasingly flexible and generative rather than structured and stable, are some of the challenges that BPM needs to overcome in order to establish its firm position within organizations. These challenges add to existing areas of interest and relevance to BPM research and industry. They also attest to an increasingly interdisciplinary nature of BPM, which transcends its original scope at the intersection of information technology, organizational management and industrial engineering, to embrace other issues raised by behavioral science, big data, operations management, social computing, cloud computing, theory of processes and many more. In line with the above aims, the special issue features four advanced works in the BPM field.

Prof. Dr. Jens Kolb completed his doctorate at DBIS in 2015 in the proView project on the topic of "Abstraction, Visualisation, and Evolution of Process Models". His promoter and supervisor was Prof. Dr. Manfred Reichert. Afterwards, Jens worked as CEO at Lemonize GmbH from June 2015 to August 2022.

In the meantime, seven of Prof. Reichert's former doctoral students now hold a professorship at a university or a university of applied sciences.

ZDF 37 Grad presented Pia Beyer-Wunsch along with two other protagonists. As a doctoral student at the Institute for Databases and Information Systems (DBIS), where she is co-supervised by Prof. Dr. Manfred Reichert and Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Pryss she is investigating the use of humanoid robots in the Ulm Children's Hospital in a research project and wants to clarify to what extent the robot can help reduce stress in children in hospital. In addition to the DBIS and the children's hospital, the Institute of Business Analytics at the University of Ulm is also involved in the project.

The link to the programme in the ZDF Mediathek can be found here.

CONSCIOUS - Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology During Process Model Comprehension

at Ulm University, Germany. The DBIS team is pleased to congratulate Michael Winter on his very successful PhD defense (Dr. rer. nat.) and wishes him and his family all the best for their future.

Michael’s PhD advisors and promotors have been Prof. Dr. Manfred Reichert and Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Pryss. The role of the external referees has been filled by Prof. Dr. Jan vom Brocke, Prof. Dr. Matthias Gamer, and Prof. Dr. Thomas Probst.

Michael conducted his PhD research in the CONSCIOUS project.

Members of the PhD committee:

• Prof. Dr. Hans Kestler (Chairman)
• Prof. Dr. Manfred Reichert (Promotor and Referee)
• Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Pryss (Co-promotor and Referee)
• Prof. Dr. Matthias Gamer (University of Wuerzburg, External Referee)
• Prof. Dr. Jan vom Brocke (University of Liechtenstein, External Referee)
• Prof. Dr. Franz Hauck (Committee Member)
• Prof. Dr. Jacobo Torán (Committee Member)
• Prof. Dr. Thomas Probst (Donau-Universität Krems, Österreich; External Committee Member)
• PD Dr. Ludwig Lauser (Committee Member)

Software development and modernization fail, are delayed and devour vast sums of money. One of the main reasons for this is poor controllability, which is usually due to a lack of documentation for the implemented software. Only those who understand the respective software well can work with it in a meaningful way. Well-documented software saves enormous costs, avoids errors and allows for  an easy start of new colleagues or development partners. In practice, however, software applications or their underlying requirements are usually developed under time pressure, and savings are made on documentation. As soon as the software applications have to be adapted, extended or modernized, this sparse documentation and lack of knowledge of the work processes supported by the software does not help, but rather creates further irritations. As a consequence, the costs and times for maintaining the software explode.

In the SoftProc project, the Institute for Databases and Information Systems (DBIS) at the University of Ulm and PITSS GmbH are developing an innovative approach that systematically analyzes a software application with everything that makes it tick, from the program code to the database schema to the processes it supports, and assembles them into a picture that everyone can understand - a kind of real-time documentation fed with the latest program statuses and with productive data from running applications. Corresponding knowledge enables decisions and makes implementations simple and reliable. Details about SoftProc can be found on the newly established project homepage.

SoftProc is an example of the promotion of innovative SMEs. With the initiative "KMU-innovativ", the BMBF has established a fast lane for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). In this program, SMEs can submit their project ideas in the field of information and communication technologies and are supported by simplified funding and accelerated approval procedures.

F. Gallik, M. Winter, Y. Kirikkayis, R. Pryss, M. Reichert: DyVProMo – A Lightweight Web-Based Tool for the Dynamic Visualization of Additional Information in Business Process Models. Demo Paper Track,  IEEE 25th EDOC Conference, Gold Coast, Australia, October 2021.

IEEE EDOC’21 was  the twenty-fifth conference in a series that provides the key forum for researchers and practitioners in the field of enterprise computing. EDOC conferences address the full range of models, methodologies, and engineering technologies contributing to intra- and inter-enterprise software systems. From 2013 to 2020, Manfred Reichert was a member of the EDOC conference steering committee. He was further PC co-chair of the EDOC 2013 conference and General Chair of the EDOC 2014 conference, which took place in Ulm in October 2014.