Blockchain and Robotic Process Automation

Description

This book integrates the material of the lecture series “Blockchain and Robotic Process Automation”, offered at Kiel University. The lecture series sheds light on current research topics on blockchain and robotic process automation (RPA) also in combination with business process management (BPM) or process mining. In this series, leading scientists and business experts give insights into the use of the blockchain technology and RPA. The seven contributions included offer a general introduction into blockchain and smart contracts, and detail the extraction of meaningful events for process mining from blockchain, challenges of blockchain-based collaborative business processes, executing Decision Model and Notation decisions on the blockchain, a blockchain-based solution for digital payment, blockchain use cases in transportation and logistics, and automatically identifying process automation candidates using natural language processing. Overall, the book provides researchers and graduate students with a basic introduction into blockchain, its applications, useful combinations of BPM and blockchain, and use cases for RPA. Preface Contents Acronyms 1 Introduction and Background: Blockchain and Smart Contracts 1.1 Why Blockchain and DLT, and What Is It? 1.2 Smart Contracts: User-Defined Programs on Blockchain 1.3 Interest in Blockchain and Smart Contracts 1.4 Overview of Architectural Concerns for Blockchain Applications 1.5 Overview of Blockchain Design Patterns 1.6 Summary References 2 Extraction of Meaningful Events for Process Mining from Blockchain 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Application Layer to Extract Events for Process Mining 2.3 Implementation 2.4 Application 2.4.1 Preparation 2.4.2 Process Discovery and Conformance Checking 2.5 Related Work 2.6 Conclusion References 3 Challenges of Blockchain-Based Collaborative Business Processes: An Overview of the Caterpillar System 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Blockchain Technology 3.3 Executing Blockchain-Based Collaborative Business Processes: Challenges and Principles 3.3.1 Choreographies Versus Single-Pool Process Models 3.3.2 Compiled Versus Interpreted 3.4 Overview of the Caterpillar System 3.5 Caterpillar's Open Challenges and Future Research Directions References 4 Executing DMN Decisions on the Blockchain 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Motivating Example Using Decision Model and Notation 4.3 Translating Decisions to Smart Contracts 4.4 Privacy-Preserving Decision-Making 4.4.1 Cryptographic Preliminaries 4.4.2 3-Phase Collaborative Decision-Making 4.4.3 Example Walkthrough 4.5 Conclusion References 5 Dimo: Blockchain-Based Solution for Digital Payment 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Dimo: Blockchain-Based Solution 5.2.1 Advantages of Dimo 5.2.2 Data Analysis 5.3 Conclusion References 6 Blockchain Use Cases in Transportation and Logistics 6.1 Introduction 6.2 Mobility-as-a-Service 6.3 Supply Chain Management and Trade Finance 6.3.1 Trade Finance 6.3.2 Case Study: Railway Bill-of-Lading 6.4 Authentication and Self-Sovereign Identities 6.5 Alliances, Consortiums, and Interest Groups 6.6 Conclusions References 7 Automatically Identifying Process Automation Candidates Using Natural Language Processing 7.1 Introduction 7.2 Identification Based on Process Model Collections 7.2.1 Core Idea 7.2.2 Conceptual Approach 7.3 Identification Based on Textual Process Descriptions 7.3.1 Core Idea 7.3.2 Conceptual Approach 7.4 Complementary Perspectives to Automation Identification 7.5 Conclusion and Outlook References