The Business Process Automation Lab (https://bpalabthcologne.github.io/bpa_lab_book/) is an ongoing project at TH Köln that supports research and teaching in the field of Business Process Automation and Analytics based on a physical industry 4.0 model factory.
The project is based on a fictional business scenario (bicycle manufacturer), which is represented by a set of process, decision, and data models. This scenario is implemented through Business Process Management Automation Technologies like Business Process Management Systems (Camunda 8), several self-developed process applications and controllers (Java and Python). As part of this implementation, IoT components like the Fischertechnik Industry 4.0 factory execute process steps. During the process execution IOT devices, process applications as well as the BPMS are creating data of different data types, which are stored in different databases.
A first data architecture based brings transactional data, process event data, and IoT data from different components together and feeds a first set of process analytics dashboards.
In future, the BPA Lab should evaluate and demonstrate more complex use cases for process analytics. To do so, the underlying automation solution and especially the data architecture and pipeline as well as the dashboards need to be extended.
While the existing data architecture allows integrated, real-time access to different data types (transactional data, process event data, and IoT data) stored in different data sources (MySQL, Elasticsearch) via a virtualization solution (Trino), these data types are currently analyzed in separate Grafana dashboards only.
This project aims to contribute to research in process analytics in industry 4.0 environments and will follow a Design Science Research approach. It will explore how diverse data types could be combined, so that manufacturing and logistics processes can be examined comprehensively and business value be generated — a question that is highly relevant for enterprises.
The project will include different work packages assigned to sub-teams:
Participants with 6 ECTS are foreseen to work primarly on WP2, WP3, and WP4, while participants with 12 ECTS are expected to contribute to WP1 (ACS, MI) and WP4 (EB, MI) in addition. The detailed assignment of tasks will be determined jointly during the kick-off meeting.
Business Process Automation technologies (Camunda 8, process applications) Process Analytics & Dashboard design (Grafana, PowerBI) Data architecture, data model, data queries (SQL) and data virtualization (Trino)
Motivation to work on a research-oriented project combining different technologies and domains is required.
Experience with business process automation, software programming (Python, SQL, …) and data models & architecture is welcome but not required
External partners for requirements gathering and evaluation will be announced later
