Acronyms and definitions used on this web site:

AI: Artificial Intelligence [Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence exhibited by machines. In computer science, an ideal "intelligent" machine is a flexible rational agent that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chance of success at some goal.]

AI: Artificial Intelligence [Artificial intelligence is the name given to the intelligence of machines and software. It wants to be a scientific discipline looking for methods of creation or simulation of intelligence.]

BI: Business Intelligence [Business intelligence (BI) can be described as "a set of techniques and tools for the acquisition and transformation of raw data into meaningful and useful information for business analysis purposes". The term "data surfacing" is also more often associated with BI functionality.]

CA: Corrective Actions, PA: Preventive Actions

Corrective and preventive action (CAPA, also called corrective action / preventive action, or simply corrective action) are improvements to an organization's processes taken to eliminate causes of non-conformities or other undesirable situations.

Cloud computing: has become associated with lean, agile and low-cost IT, and many users expect it to solve many of their IT problems.

CRM: Customer Relations Management [Customer relationship management (CRM) is a term that refers to practices, strategies and technologies that companies use to manage and analyze customer interactions and data throughout the customer lifecycle, with the goal of improving business relationships with customers, assisting in customer retention and driving ...]

DD: Design and Development

DFE: Design For The Environment

ECM: Enterprise content management (ECM) is a formalized means of organizing and storing an organization's documents, and other content, that relate to the organization's processes. The term encompasses strategies, methods, and tools used throughout the lifecycle of the content.

ERD: Electronic Routing Database

ERP: Enterprise Resource Planing [Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is a category of business-management software—typically a suite of integrated applications—that an organization can use to collect, store, manage and interpret data from many business activities, including: product planning, purchase. maEnterprise Virtual Analyst

nufacturing or service delivery.]

EVA: Enterprise Virtual Analyst. [ systems that intelligently adapt to deliver personalized solutions, monitoring applications and content sources to reduce information overload and data chaos.

GNU: The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or GPL) is a widely used free software license, which guarantees end users (individuals, organizations, companies) the freedoms to run, study, share (copy), and modify the software. Software that allows these rights is called free software and, if the software is copylefted, requires those rights to be retained. The GPL demands both. The license was originally written by Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for the GNU Project.

GTD: Getting Things Done (workflow and time management method based on moving planned tasks and projects out of the mind by recording them externally and then breaking them into actionable work items. This allows one to focus attention on taking action on tasks, instead of recalling them. Five stages: capture, clarify, organize, reflect, engage).

MPE : Materials and Processes Engineering

QMS: Quality Management Systems [A quality management system (QMS) is a set of policies, processes and procedures required for planning and execution (production/development/service) in the core business area of an organization. (i.e. areas that can impact the organization's ability to meet customer requirements.)]

OS: Open Source

OEM: Original Equipement Manufacturer

GNU: GNU is composed wholly of free software, most of which is licensed under GNU's own GPL.

ML: Machine Learning. A "Field of study that gives computers the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed". Machine learning explores the study and construction of algorithms that can learn from and make predictions on data. Such algorithms operate by building a model from example inputs in order to make data-driven predictions or decisions, rather than following strictly static program instructions.

LL: Lessons Learned [Lessons learned or Lessons learnt are experiences distilled from a project that should be actively taken into account in future projects.]

TS: TripleStore (Object oriented graphDB)

TPS: Toyota Production System

VA: Virtual Assistant

Workflow modelling definitions

Workflows range from basic activities to the complete Business Process of an enterprise.

The Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC [1]) defines the following :

Workflow: ‘The automation of a business process, in whole or part, during which documents, information or tasks are passed from one participant to another for action, according to a set of procedural rules.’

Activity: ‘A description of a piece of work that forms one logical step within a process. An activity may be a manual activity, which does not support computer automation, or a workflow (automated) activity. A workflow activity requires human and/or machine resources(s) to support process execution; where human resource is required an activity is allocated to a workflow participant.’

Process: ‘The representation of a business process in a form which supports automated manipulation, such as modelling, or enactment by a workflow management system. The process definition consists of a network of activities and their relationships, criteria to indicate the start and termination of the process, and information about the individual activities, such as participants, associated IT applications and data, etc.’

Instance: ‘The representation of a single enactment of a process, or activity within a process, including its associated data. Each instance represents a separate thread of execution of the process or activity, which may be controlled independently and will have its own internal state and externally visible identity, which may be used as a handle, for example, to record or retrieve audit data relating to the individual enactment.’ Instances are process instances, which are representations of a single enactment of a process, or activity instances, which are representations of an activity within a single enactment of a process (within a process instance). Process instances are often called cases.

Ref [1]: The Workflow Management Coalition Specification, Workflow Management Coalition Terminology & Glossary; Document Number WFMC-TC-1011; Document Status - Issue 3.0; February 1999.