UoC SNAPT @ Thales 24/02/2012

Service Networks Visualization:
Service Network Analysis & Prediction Tool
(SNAPT)

University of Crete (UoC)
Christos Nikolaou, Pantelis Petridis, George Stratakis, Mariana
Karmazi

S-Cube Industrial Dissemination Workshop, Thales, Paris, 24/02/2012

www.s-cube-network.eu

Research Area

S-Cube

Business Process Management

(Performance) Analysis and Design of Service Networks

Service Network Analysis and Prediction Tool (SNAPT)

S-Cube Industry Workshop @ Thales, 24/2/2012 © S-Cube - 2

Overview

 Background & Problem Description
 Service Network Analysis and Prediction Tool (SNAPT)
– SNAPT Overview and Fundamental Concepts
– SNAPT Metamodel and Visualization Techniques
– From Service Network Models to initial draft Business Process Models

 Conclusion


Background: Service Systems (or
Service Networks)
 Service system: dynamic co-creation configuration of resources (people,
organizations, shared information) and technology, connected together
through value propositions (Spohrer, Maglio)
– Proposed in order to model, analyze and optimize interactions among various
network partners.
– High level of abstraction, hiding details regarding concrete interactions in
terms of business processes
- Model services that are offered and consumed by business entities
- Service providers (providing a set of service offers)
 Formatted mainly because of: globalization, advances in ICT, pressure for
innovation, increased competition, constant change of customers’
demands, which lead to increased focus on core competencies (or
strengths) and outsourcing.
 Based on a new marketing discipline: Service-Dominant (S-D) Logic
 Service networks are considered as projections of service systems and
they are embedded in Service Ecosystems

Background: Service Ecosystem

 A Service Ecosystem is a socio-technical environment consisting of:
– All the services available in a particular sector of the economy (e.g. home
electronics, online media, etc.)
– All the supporting (enabling) good and services (e.g. Banking, building
maintenance, power and telecom utilities, brokers, distributors, etc.)
– All the regulating and supervising authorities


Perspectives on Service Systems
Modeling and Analysis
 Business Perspective (economic and marketing
viewpoint): Conceptual modeling and analysis techniques
studying service networks in a high abstraction layer depicting
the entities participating in the network while analyzing
network vitality and calculating value created for each
participant and for the network as a whole.
– Value chain, Value Networks

 IT Perspective: Deals with the alignment and coordination of
the participating entities’ business processes and information
systems in order to achieve the agreed-upon business
outcome
– Business Process Management (BPM) and its lifecycle
– Service-oriented architecture (SOA)


Problem Description

 Thus, there is a need for a holistic approach combining the concepts
underpinning BPM and SOA in order to support service systems prevailing
in the networked economy
– Propose a unified modeling methodology combining concepts from the
business perspective and the IT perspective
– Target both
- Business analysts
- IT experts
 SNAPT Vision:
– Visualize service networks (SNs), define business metrics and goals to SNs in
terms of Key Performance Objectives (KPOs), monitoring of KPIs
corresponding to KPOs sets, take corrective actions (e.g., violations)
– A prototype tool for constructing service network models and transforming into
initial business process models based on BPMN, bridging the gap between
tools and concepts.


Overview

 Problem Description

 Conclusion


Overview of SNAPT

 SNAPT is a prototype tool for:
– Modeling service networks as a set of services and business entities based on a
proposed meta-model
– Adding Key Performance Objectives (KPOs) to services within SNs
– Analyzing performance of service networks
– Extracting draft business process models out of service networks models
- BPMN support, Eclipse BPMN editor
- IBM Websphere Studio process diagrams
– Support for simulation tools (e.g., Vensim, iThink)
- Currently, service networks models are
mapped to simulation models
supported in Vensim


SNAPT Architecture in brief

 SNAPT has been developed following the Model-Driven Architecture
(MDA)
 Eclipse platform has been utilized for the development process taking
advantage of the plug-ins extension mechanisms in order to allow future
extensions or modifications to the tool.


SNAPT Models and Plug-ins


SNAPT Fundamental Concepts

 Foundation principle: any business can be modeled as a service.
– Products as a service = it is the delivery of the product that comprises the
service offered to the end customer
 The existence of a service network implies that there is a single service or
a bundle of services that a key business entity delivers to an end
customer.
 A Service Network is defined as a set of business entities and services
and it can be visualized as a graph of nodes
– Nodes correspond to business entities
– Arcs correspond to services offered and consumed by the business entities
inside the network
- An arc implies an economic exchange
- Origin point of the arc reveals the business entity that offers the service
- The end point of the arc reveals the business entity that consumes the
service


Overview

– SNAPT Meta-smodel and Visualization Techniques

 Conclusion


SNAPT Service Network Metamodel


Snapshots: Visualize Service Networks

Participant offers a Single service to the End Customer

Enablement Service: an Enabler enables the delivery of the Service 1


Snapshots: Service Sub-Networks

Service Network ServiceSubNetwork
Sub-network input

Sub-network output

Service “Supplies” consumed by “Service” offered by ServiceSubNetwork
ServiceSubNetwork in the SN (left), is in the Service Network (left), is mapped
mapped to an input port in the to an output port in the
ServiceSubNetwork (right). ServiceSubNetwork (right).


Snapshot: Assign KPOs

 SNAPT provides a KPI Library based on
the APQC Process Classification
Frameworks
 Fully compatible with IBM
Websphere Business Modeler
 SNAPT updates its internal KPI library
from the KPIs Repository
 REST-based interface

 SNAPT user can select from the library
the desired KPO to assign to a service


Case study: Car Repair Service Network

 The purpose of this network is to efficiently deliver to the car owners the
service of “Parts and Repair”
 In order for the Dealers to deliver the “Parts and Repair” service to the Car
Owners, they must first order the parts with the help of the Parts Manager
and then consume one of the “Parts” service delivered by Car OEM or the
Third Party Suppliers, together with the “Repair” service provided by the
technicians and taking into account the “Advice for Repairs” service
delivered by the CAR OEM. The CAR OEM delivers the “Parts” and the
“Advice for Repairs” service after consuming the corresponding services
from the Supply Chain Supplier and the Help Desk Experts, respectively.


Model


Overview

– From Service Network Models to initial draft Business Process
Models

 Summary


From Service Network Models to initial
draft Business Process Models
 SNAPT supports a methodology for mapping Service Network
Models to Business Process Models
 Two sets of transformation rules are proposed and supported
by SNAPT
– The 1st set maps SN models to collaborative business process models
according to BPMN standard and the export format is compatible with
the Eclipse BPMN Editor, an open source business process diagram
editor
– The 2nd set maps SN models to process models based on the format
supported by IBM WebSphere Business Modeler Advanced.
- A commercial business process modeling and analysis tool


Sequencing of Services (1/3)

 The delivery of the service offered by a service network
implies that the resources and back-end systems of the
business entities are integrated and coordinated accordingly
in order to achieve connection of entire business value chains
that will deliver the desired outcome.
 However, service networks models are highly abstract in
nature and they do not include any operational details, like
sequencing of processes, message exchanges, etc.
 So, it’s mandatory to properly annotate services in the service
network models to define the order of services in a service
network model
– Identify composite services


Sequencing of Services (2/3)

 Sequencing information of each service s is created relatively to the
set of services that are offered to the source business Entity of
service s
 Gateways are used to express sequencing, which can be nested in
any order
– Sequential Block: this gateway implies that any of its children elements is
delivered in series, one after the other
– AND Block: this gateway specifies that its elements should be delivered in
parallel
– XOR Block:denotes that exclusively one of the elements in the block must be
delivered.

 To sum up, any sequencing service (a service with sequencing
information attached) is decomposed to several services that will be
delivered in the order defined by gateways


Sequencing of Services (3/3): Simple
Sequential Block Example
 Example of Sequential Block: In order for Service1 to be delivered to
Participant2, both Service2 and Service3 must first be delivered to Participant1 in
order.
Annotation indicating
Sequencing Services

Sequence Order


From SNAPT to Eclipse BMPN Editor

Mapping from SN constructs
to BPMN elements

Mapping a single service
delivery to a generic
BPMN workflow

S-Cube Industry Workshop @ Thales, 24/2/2012
S-Cube Industry Workshop, Palaisseau, 24/2/2012 © S-Cube - 2

From SNAPT to Eclipse BMPN Editor
Example
 Based on the Simple Sequential Block Example


From SNAPT to IBM WebSphere
Business Modeler

Mapping from SN
constructs to IBM
Modeler elements

Mapping a single service delivery to a generic workflow


From SNAPT to IBM WebSphere
Business Modeler


to Eclipse BPMN diagram


to IBM WebSphere Modeler


From SNAPT to VENSIM tool

 A system dynamics model in Vensim tool also consists of
variables and arrows that represent the relations and
specifically the dependencies among the variables.
 Business entities are mapped to either a constant or an
auxiliary variable
 Services are mapped to variables, as well. For each Service
Network Model Service, three variables are declared
corresponding to the two business entities and the service;
two arrows connect the service variable to the source and
target business entity


From SNAPT to VENSIM models


Conclusion

 Towards bridging the world of business analysts and IT
experts including the concept of service systems
 SNAPT serves as a hub providing appropriate outputs to both
simulation tools that analyze the vitality of these networks as
well as to BPM suites, for supporting the underlying business
processes which connect the systems of the involved
participants.
 Current Work
– Integrating the library of business protocols based on RosettaNet
– Performance analysis of strategic interactions
– Contracts Compliance


Acknowledgements

The research leading to these results has
received funding from the European
Community’s Seventh Framework
Programme [FP7/2007-2013] under grant
agreement 215483 (S-Cube).


UoC SNAPT @ Thales 24/02/2012

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