1939-1374 (c) 2015 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information. This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TSC.2015.2406694, IEEE Transactions on Services Computing IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SERVICES COMPUTING, VOL. XX, NO. X, XXXX XXXX 1 The Use of Ubiquitous Computing for Business Process Improvement Alaaeddine Yousfi, Adrian de Freitas, Anind K. Dey and Rajaa Saidi Abstract—Due to the cut throat competition among organizations, business process improvement is now an everyday activity. A relentless activity that makes business processes more complex than ever. As they get more complex, the improvement rounds become time-consuming, costly and the quality of each outcome is put into jeopardy, which is somehow paradoxical with the concept of improvement. In this paper, we propose a business process improvement technique based on ubiquitous computing. First, we couple business processes with ubiquitous computing and define a ubiquitous business process. Then, we explain how ubiquitous computing positively impacts the performance metrics of business processes. Afterwards, we set a specification for designing ubiquitous business processes by extending BPMN. Finally, we propose a concrete case study about time-banking to corroborate our theory. A comparative study of the same process, in ubiquitous and non-ubiquitous versions, is established. The results clearly illustrate that ubiquitous computing impacts positively the business process performance metrics. Still, the case study corroborates that ubiquitous computing not only improves a business process but also enables it to get improved with the least of human interventions. Index Terms—Business Process, Business Process Improvement, Ubiquitous Computing, uBPMN, Time-Banking ✦ 1 I NTRODUCTION C OMPANIES are always under a cruel competitiveness against each other for market share or even for sur- vival. They must constantly be innovative to remain in the race. To do so, new technologies are often deemed as solutions. For example, Business Processes were introduced to help American firms regain their lost supremacy to the Asian/European competitors [1], [2]. Their introduction was revolutionary as it initiated a new era of process- oriented organizations in which the barrier of structural hierarchy (e.g., departments) fell into disrepute. Within process-oriented organizations, the participants, the activ- ities, the participants’ assigned activities and their order of accomplishments are all meticulously posed to avoid unexpectedness. Business processes did, indeed, exhibit pioneering results in improving the performance metrics (i.e., time, cost and quality) of their host organizations. Be that as it may, let us consider an analogical situa- tion. When first introduced, computers were considered revolutionary. Nevertheless, the ongoing need for faster, cheaper and more efficient computers stimulated research targeting their improvement. For instance, Moore’s law [3] stipulates that the number of transistors in a chip doubles each eighteen months leading endlessly to faster, cheaper and more efficient chips. Therefore, better computers. Similarly to computers, business processes made a rev- olution when first introduced and are continuously un- • A. Yousfi, A. de Freitas & A. K. Dey are with the Human-Computer Interaction Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA E-mail: aeyousfi@cmu.edu, {adefreit, anind}@cs.cmu.edu • R. Saidi is with the INSEA, Rabat, Morocco E-mail: r.saidi@insea.ac.ma • A. Yousfi & R. Saidi are also with the LRIT, Research Unit Associated to the CNRST (URAC 29), FSR, Mohammed V University, Rabat, Morocco Manuscript received TBD dergoing improvements. However, the everlasting need of organizations to further optimize their business processes’ performance metrics sets an indefinite loop of improve- ments. Moreover, large organizations now have hundreds of processes in place and each round of improvement makes them more complex to improve in the upcoming one [4]. In fact, by adopting this strategy companies started to face a paradoxical situation. They urge to improve business processes (optimize time, cost and quality) that get more complex and less documented after each round of improve- ment which makes them even harder to improve (costly in time and money) and more error-prone (quality at risk). The situation exacerbates since business processes are starting to connect to the Internet of Things [5], [6], [7], [8], [9] that brings an overabundance of data and unfamiliar trends to the field of business process management. There are several techniques for business process im- provement. Two of these are Six Sigma [10] and Balanced Scorecard [11]. While they are the most famous, little at- tention has been given to the cases where they cannot be applied. For starters, Six Sigma is a rigorous approach that requires (1) Strong commitment from the business process participants, as they undergo special training for each type of participant (e.g., champion, black built) and must always adhere to the business requirements set by the organization and (2) Constant monitoring from the business process owner(s) to maintain the sigma quality level and check for any potential digression. In fact, airlines do even aim for a quality level of seven sigma (0.019 defects per millions) with regard to the processes for handling passengers safety [12]. Nevertheless, imagine when either or both conditions (strong commitment and constant monitoring) are not met. Six Sigma will no longer be applicable. For instance, let us consider health-care. Unlike airlines, physicians neither have control over their patients nor have access to all the relevant data. For the first condition, a patient could be a rough youngster, an illiterate adult, or even a self-