A Goal-Based Approach for Learning in Business Processes - Intentional Perspectives on Information Systems Engineering - page 239

Ta b l e 1 Soft goals - reasons for poor achievement

Soft goal Main reasons for poor achievement

Meeting delivery due dates Quality problems, machine failure, unskilled workers

Increasing machine utilization Set up times, quality problems, machine failure

Reducing waste of raw materials Quality problems, inappropriate machine setup

Increasing product quality Inappropriate machine setup, poor quality of raw material,

poor machine condition, inappropriate quality inspection

Reducing production costs Raw material cost, raw material waste, labor cost

4 The Learning Approach

The proposed learning approach includes a learning life-cycle, described in Fig. 2.
The learning cycle can be initiated when a process has already been performed for a
period of time, so some experience has already been accumulated. This experience
is stored in an experience base, including data of past process instances: their actual
path, their achieved outcome, and their context information. Note that context infor-
mation includes all the environmental variables, as we cannot tell in advance which
ones are relevant.
The life cycle includes two main phases: a learning phase and the application of
its results in runtime, which, in turn, produces more experience to be stored in the
experience base for the next cycle.
The learning phase includes a step of initial context identification, which yields
a definition of context groups. These groups serve as a basis for the generation of

Fig. 2 The proposed learning cycle