資訊科技迫使企業重新考慮其企業程序，其中以工作流程管理系統被認為最能改善企業程序與提高客戶滿意程度。工作流程管理系統已經被廣泛地應用在企業中，然而現有工作流程管理系統在規格與執行上均尚未考慮時間限制。所以本研究提出了一個時間限制的管理模式來協助定義工作流程上的時間限制，並且發展出在工作流程『定義階段』與『執行階段』驗證時間限制一致性的方法，有效地去除不符合時間限制要求的工作流程，以減少因執行無效的工作流程所衍生的資源浪費。

The advances of information technologies have forced many enterprises to reconsider the way their business processes are conducted. Among the various information technologies, workflow management systems (WFMSs) are widely recognized as an effective tool to greatly improve the efficiency of business processes and customers’ satisfaction. Today, a great number of commercial WFMSs have been available on the market; however, none of them are very successful due to the lack of some important features. One of the features that are needed by many business processes is the specification and enforcement of time constraints. In this thesis, we propose a time constraint model that helps workflow designer to define and verify time constraints. Different constraints may be verified at different times, e.g., definition time, invocation time, execution time. A workflow instance, once detected as a violation of some time constraint, could be terminated immediately to avoid the waste of precious resources as well as to provide prompt response to users. A variety of algorithms for verifying time constraints are proposed and analyzed.

第一篇 源起
第一章 緒論
1.1 前言…………………………………………………………………..2
1.2 研究動機……………………………………………………………..3
1.3 工作流程管理………………………………………………………..5
1.4 工作流程定義的一致性……………………………………………..7
1.5 研究目標與成果……………………………………………………..8
1.6 章節介紹………………………………………………………….….9
第二章 文獻探討
2.1 工作流程定義分析……………………………………………………10
2.2 網路模式的時間管理…………………………………………………15
2.3 Marjanovic & Orlowska的時間限制模式…………………………….18
第二篇 工作流程時間限制一致性
第三章 工作流程時間限制模式
3.1 工作流程模式…………………………………………………………26
3.2 研究的前提與假設……………………………………………………26
3.3 時間限制模式…………………………………………………………27
3.4 時間限制對工作流程的影響…………………………………………36
3.5 問題描述………………………………………………………………39
第四章 工作流程時間限制一致性檢查
4.1 時間限制一致性的定義………………………………………………43
4.2 工作流程時間限制的推導……………………………………………45
4.3 時間限制一致性檢查的演算法………………………………………52
4.4 多層次（Layered）的時間限制一致性………………………………73
第五章 工作流程執行時動態檢查時間限制一致性
5.1 工作流程啟動時的檢查………………………………………………75
5.2 時間限制一致性的重新檢查（Re-Check）機制……………………76
5.3 時間限制一致性重新檢查演算法……………………………………79
第六章 結論……………………………………………………………..….85
第七章 文獻參考…………………………………………………….……..87

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