Adaptive Digital Twin Supporting IoT-Enhanced Business Process

Business Process Management provides a systematic approach to improving the efficiency, quality, and profitability of business processes. Optimizing business op- erations is a key point to remain competitive in today’s rapidly evolving business landscape. Strategic alignment between business activities and Information Tech- nology is essential in this context. The Internet of Things is one of the technologies that has revolutionized the Information Technology landscape, enabling intercon- nected devices to collect and exchange real-world data, and facilitating integration and automation within organizations. In the Business Process Management con- text, IoT devices are usually used to automate and perform tasks required to achieve a business process’ goal. These processes are commonly referred to as IoT- Enhanced Business Processes or IoT-Aware Business Processes. This interplay has significantly improved operational efficiency and resource utilization within organizations, creating new opportunities for innovation and growth. Despite these potential benefits, integrating the Internet of Things technologies into operational processes presents significant challenges: providing a robust and solid system architecture, defining a standard for modeling IoT-Enhanced Business Processes, and leveraging insights derived from raw data of smart objects. In this regard, the purpose of this thesis is twofold. Firstly, a systematic litera- ture study to acquire a better awareness of the current modeling notations, require- ments and views is necessary to explore the current state of the art. Insights into existing practices, standards, and methodologies for integrating IoT technologies and business process management techniques need to be defined. Secondly, based on the literature findings, this thesis proposes Adaptive-Twin, a novel concep- tual framework designed to continuously optimize IoT-Enhanced Business Pro- cesses. Leveraging the Digital Twin paradigm, Adaptive-Twin creates virtual replicas of IoT system entities, enabling real-time synchronization and dynamic updates of IoT entities involved in the processes. The conceptual framework aims to enhance process performance and achieve competitive real-time alignment be- tween business operations and IoT technologies. To demonstrate the framework’s efficacy, Adaptive-Twin was evaluated in a use case inspired by a marine con- tainer terminal process, showcasing its ability to optimize IoT-Enhanced Business Processes.