The state of the art of workflow management techniques in research is introduced. The research and development trends of Workflow Management System (WFMS) are presented. On basis of analysis and comparison of kinds of...The state of the art of workflow management techniques in research is introduced. The research and development trends of Workflow Management System (WFMS) are presented. On basis of analysis and comparison of kinds of WFMSs, a WFMS based on Web technology and distributed object management is proposed. Finally, the application of the WFMS in supply chain management is described in detail.展开更多
This paper proposes a useful web-based system for the management and sharing of electron probe micro-analysis( EPMA)data in geology. A new web-based architecture that integrates the management and sharing functions is...This paper proposes a useful web-based system for the management and sharing of electron probe micro-analysis( EPMA)data in geology. A new web-based architecture that integrates the management and sharing functions is developed and implemented.Earth scientists can utilize this system to not only manage their data,but also easily communicate and share it with other researchers.Data query methods provide the core functionality of the proposed management and sharing modules. The modules in this system have been developed using cloud GIS technologies,which help achieve real-time spatial area retrieval on a map. The system has been tested by approximately 263 users at Jilin University and Beijing SHRIMP Center. A survey was conducted among these users to estimate the usability of the primary functions of the system,and the assessment result is summarized and presented.展开更多
In order to maintain a proper balance between development pressure and water resources protection, and also to improve public participation, efficient tools and techniques for soil and water conservation projects are ...In order to maintain a proper balance between development pressure and water resources protection, and also to improve public participation, efficient tools and techniques for soil and water conservation projects are needed. This paper describes the development and application of a web-based watershed management spatial decision support system, WebWMPI. The WebWMPI uses the Watershed Management Priority Indices (WMPI) approach which is a prioritizing method for watershed management planning and it integrates land use/cover, hydrological data, soils, slope, roads, and other spatial data. The land is divided into three categories: Conservation Priority Index (CPI) land, Restoration Priority Index (RPI) land, and Stormwater Management Priority Index (SMPI) land. Within each category, spatial factors are rated based on their influence on water resources and critical areas can be identified for soil conservation, water quality protection and improvement. The WebWMPI has user-friendly client side graphical interfaces which enable the public to interactively run the server side Geographic Information System to evaluate different scenarios for watershed planning and management. The system was applied for Dry Run Creek watershed (Cedar Falls, Iowa, US) as a demonstration and it can be easily used in other watersheds to prioritize crucial areas and to increase public participation for soil and water conservation projects.展开更多
This paper is concerned with the development of product data management (PDM) systems--WPDM systems based on web technologies. As a tool to integrate information, traditional PDM system has many benefits for the com...This paper is concerned with the development of product data management (PDM) systems--WPDM systems based on web technologies. As a tool to integrate information, traditional PDM system has many benefits for the companies in such aspects as improving design productivity, better control over projects and so on. With the maturing of web technologies, the advantages of WPDM system are obvious. We will show these advantages in detail in Part 3. WPDM system is built on three-tier application model to provide security and flexibility, they are back-end, middle layer and front-end. The basic designs in each layer will be briefly introduced in Part 4. In the future, WPDM will be extended to integrate with other applications to provide a complete web-based engineering environment.展开更多
To align customer demand with suppliers for reducing work in process and supply costs and increasing re sp onsiveness to customer requirements, a real time collaborative supply chain mana gement system is essential...To align customer demand with suppliers for reducing work in process and supply costs and increasing re sp onsiveness to customer requirements, a real time collaborative supply chain mana gement system is essential. A solution to the realization of supply chain manage ment capable of timely responding to customer requirements is proposed. Workflow automation is used to manage process interaction across enterprises; Agents can be automatically invoked by supply chain workflow process and are used to pro mote the flexibility and reconfigurability by providing the mechanism in support of distributed compution in an enterprises to meet the requirements of performa nce and business dynamics. An approach that supports agent based workflow proce ss in a supply chain is proposed. And the coordination mechanism between agents is also discussed.展开更多
Data-centric modeling approach for workflow specification and design has received considerable attention from research and development communities.An architecture for a workflow management system named EZFLOWS was out...Data-centric modeling approach for workflow specification and design has received considerable attention from research and development communities.An architecture for a workflow management system named EZFLOWS was outlined.Key components and research issues associated with the development of EZFLOWS were discussed.展开更多
Nurses are at the forefront of providing healthcare services to individuals of all age groups and with varying medical conditions.Aside from the critical knowledge and technical skills from nursing science,advancement...Nurses are at the forefront of providing healthcare services to individuals of all age groups and with varying medical conditions.Aside from the critical knowledge and technical skills from nursing science,advancement in technology has assisted nurses in delivering quality nursing care by streamlining workflow processes and ensuring that data can easily be retrieved or modified.Electronic health records dramatically changed the landscape of the healthcare practice by providing an electronic means to store data and for healthcare professionals to retrieve and manipulate health information in a secured and collaborative environment.But with the nature of data being stored in the electronic health records,nurses still need to organize and process these data into relevant information,knowledge or wisdom so they can provide better holistic care to patients.This discussion paper details the role of content management systems in addressing nursing workflow by providing a mechanism for nurses to be developers themselves,and not just users or consumers of health innovative technologies.By using content management systems as platform for application development,nurses or other healthcare professionals,may be able to address problems with internal workflow without having to incur huge amounts in software development,or having to extensively learn programming languages.展开更多
A product-oriented process workflow management model is proposed based on themulti-agent technology. The autonomy, inter-operability, scalability and flexibility of agent areused to cooperate the whole process plannin...A product-oriented process workflow management model is proposed based on themulti-agent technology. The autonomy, inter-operability, scalability and flexibility of agent areused to cooperate the whole process planning and achieve the full share of resource and information.Thus, unnecessary waste of human labor, time and work is reduced and the computer-aided processplanning (CAPP) system's adaptability and stability are improved. In the detailed implementation,according to the products' BOM (Bill of materials) in structural design, the task assignment,management control, automatic process making, process examination and process sanction are combinedinto a unified management to make it convenient for the adjustment, control and management.展开更多
Purpose:.To explore and establish a rational management workflow for a free cataract surgery program for the poor population in urban China, aiming to improve surgical efficiency.Methods:.Establishment of a management...Purpose:.To explore and establish a rational management workflow for a free cataract surgery program for the poor population in urban China, aiming to improve surgical efficiency.Methods:.Establishment of a management workflow mainly includes system design and an auxiliary facility. System design procedures consist of outpatient screening, outpatient physical examination,.surgical procedures,.and postoperative clinic visits. After establishing the management workflow of cataract surgery, a free cataract surgery program was conducted for 15 months.Results: Based upon the established management mode, 9003 patients received preoperative screening and 2358 underwent cataract surgery..During the 15-month investigation,.each procedure was successfully conducted,.the efficiency of screening and operation attained the highest standards in China,.and no surgical malpractice occurred intraoperatively.Conclusion:.In this study,.a management workflow for cataract surgery was designed for a poverty relief project in urban China. During the 15-month project, the degree of patient satisfaction was enhanced without disrupting the normal practice and safety of the sponsor hospital.展开更多
With the vehement development of global competition , Agile Supply Chain (ASC) becomes an effective approach that supports dynamic ent erprise alliance and realizes agile manufacturing, as for the enterprises to cap t...With the vehement development of global competition , Agile Supply Chain (ASC) becomes an effective approach that supports dynamic ent erprise alliance and realizes agile manufacturing, as for the enterprises to cap ture market opportunities rapidly and strengthen their anti-risk ability. As Ag ile Supply Chain System (ASCS) is dynamic and distributed, the realization of it ’s processes needs to be much flexible. Often in Agile Supply Chain System (ASCS ), there are many dynamic tasks, many changes of the processes, and cooperative workflows, which need the workflows able to be adjusted agilely and smoothly, no t much affecting others. This paper will propose a flexible workflow management for achieving the agility and compatibility. At the first of the paper, we will discuss the situation in which Agile Supply C hain System is applied, and then we will elaborate the characteristics of Agile Supply Chain System. So with that, the shortcomings of the process managements t hat are, at present, used in Supply Chain Systems will be displayed clearly. The n, the proposal will be given in the paper, to resolve the problems in the prese nt process management in ASCS. We will see supply chain systems implemented mult i-agent-based technology to adapt to the dynamic environment, however in many systems, coordination of the workflows is executed by the explicit messages comm unicated between the agents. This will lead to a tightly coupled system. To over come it, the paper suggests the workflow management in agent-based ASCS using t he Events-Triggering mechanism, instead of the explicit messages. We create Eve nts-Triggering contents and rules, having push-pull mechanism, event-state se t and triggering-conditions, and store them in the distributed database subject ed to the corresponding agents. Adjusting the Events-Triggering data will be us ed to adapt to the dynamic tasks and the changes of processes. In sum, we will p resent the methods of process modeling, the system structure, and the executing -mechanism of the flexible workflow management we propose in the paper. Also, t he paper outlines several exception-handling policies for the flexible workflow management, in succession. And at the final of the paper, we discuss the realiz ation of the flexible workflow management in Agile Supply Chain System. The flex ible workflow management will be implemented using CORBA services and Java techn ology for the distributed systems. CORBA is chosen as the specification of distr ibuted electronic data exchange, and Java as the construction tool of the system . The framework of the flexible workflow management constructed on them is showe d in the paper.展开更多
A great deal of benefits can be achieved if information and process are integrated within the building design project. This paper aims to establish a prototype of workflow management system for construction design pro...A great deal of benefits can be achieved if information and process are integrated within the building design project. This paper aims to establish a prototype of workflow management system for construction design project through the application of workflow technology. The composition and function of prototype is presented to satisfy the needs of information share and process integration. By integrating all subsystems and modules of the prototype, the whole system can deal with design information-flow modeling, emulating and optimizing, task planning and distributing, automatic tracking and monitoring, as well as network service, etc. In this way, the collaborative design environment of building design proiect is brought into being.展开更多
On the basis of PDM(product data management) definition and its connotation, the factors to ensure implementation success are analyzed. The definition phase, analysis phase, design phase, build and test phase, and pos...On the basis of PDM(product data management) definition and its connotation, the factors to ensure implementation success are analyzed. The definition phase, analysis phase, design phase, build and test phase, and post production phase during PDM implementation are described. The implementation is divided into ten processes, which consist of the above different phases. The relationships between phases and processes are illustrated. Finally, a workflow is proposed to guide the implementing at a fixed price.展开更多
In order to enable both manufacturers and suppliers to be profitable on today’s highly competitive markets, manufacturers and suppliers must be quick in selecting best partners establishing strategic relationship, an...In order to enable both manufacturers and suppliers to be profitable on today’s highly competitive markets, manufacturers and suppliers must be quick in selecting best partners establishing strategic relationship, and collaborating with each other so that they can satisfy the changing competitive manufacturing requirements. A web-based supplier relationships (SR) framework is therfore proposed using multi-agent systems and linear programming technique to reduce supply cost, increase flexibility and shorten response time. Web-based SR approach is an ideal platform for information exchange that helps buyers and suppliers to maintain the availability of materials in the right quantity, at the right place, and at the right time, and keep the customer-supplier relationship more transparent. A multi-agent system prototype was implemented by simulation, which shows the feasibility of the proposed architecture.展开更多
A new web product data management architecture is presented. The three-tier web architecture and Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) are combined to build the web-based product data management (PDM) system which incl...A new web product data management architecture is presented. The three-tier web architecture and Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) are combined to build the web-based product data management (PDM) system which includes three tiers: the user services tier, the business services tier, and the data services tier. The client service component uses the server-side technology, and Extensible Markup Language (XML) web service which uses SOAP as the communication protocol is chosen as the business service component. To illustrate how to build a web-based PDM system using the proposed architecture, a case PDM system which included three logical tires was built. To use the security and central management features of the database, a stored procedure was recommended in the data services tier. The business object was implemented as an XML web service so that client could use standard internet protocols to communicate with the business object from any platform. In order to satisfy users using all sorts of browser, the server-side technology and Microsoft ASP.NET was used to create the dynamic user interface.展开更多
In concurrent engineering, effective process management is the key to improve the efficiency and quality of product development. Although in project management system, workflow management system and PDM system, proces...In concurrent engineering, effective process management is the key to improve the efficiency and quality of product development. Although in project management system, workflow management system and PDM system, process management functions are provided, they can not meet the needs of product development. In this paper, we integrate the project management, workflow management and product management technique together and a concurrent engineering oriented integrated product development process management system is proposed. The system structure, integrated product development model and running method are introduced. The practice proves this system is powerful in supporting product development process.展开更多
Workflow management is an important aspect in CSCW at present. The elementary knowledge of workflow process is introduced, the Petri nets based process modeling methodology and basic definitions are provided, and the ...Workflow management is an important aspect in CSCW at present. The elementary knowledge of workflow process is introduced, the Petri nets based process modeling methodology and basic definitions are provided, and the analysis and verification of structural and behavioral correctness of workflow process are discussed. Finally, the algorithm of verification of process definitions is proposed.展开更多
The interactive task allocation process between workflow management system(WFMS) and resources in real bussiness is analyzed. A series of fundamental workflow resource allocation patterns (WRAPs) are identified. T...The interactive task allocation process between workflow management system(WFMS) and resources in real bussiness is analyzed. A series of fundamental workflow resource allocation patterns (WRAPs) are identified. These patterns provide the basis for the design of the more adaptive workflow system. A WRAP framework is proposed to provide a referenced classification system for further pattern extensions.展开更多
文摘The state of the art of workflow management techniques in research is introduced. The research and development trends of Workflow Management System (WFMS) are presented. On basis of analysis and comparison of kinds of WFMSs, a WFMS based on Web technology and distributed object management is proposed. Finally, the application of the WFMS in supply chain management is described in detail.
基金National Major Scientific Instruments and Equipment Development Special Funds,China(No.2016YFF0103303)National Science and Technology Support Program,China(No.2014BAK02B03)
文摘This paper proposes a useful web-based system for the management and sharing of electron probe micro-analysis( EPMA)data in geology. A new web-based architecture that integrates the management and sharing functions is developed and implemented.Earth scientists can utilize this system to not only manage their data,but also easily communicate and share it with other researchers.Data query methods provide the core functionality of the proposed management and sharing modules. The modules in this system have been developed using cloud GIS technologies,which help achieve real-time spatial area retrieval on a map. The system has been tested by approximately 263 users at Jilin University and Beijing SHRIMP Center. A survey was conducted among these users to estimate the usability of the primary functions of the system,and the assessment result is summarized and presented.
文摘In order to maintain a proper balance between development pressure and water resources protection, and also to improve public participation, efficient tools and techniques for soil and water conservation projects are needed. This paper describes the development and application of a web-based watershed management spatial decision support system, WebWMPI. The WebWMPI uses the Watershed Management Priority Indices (WMPI) approach which is a prioritizing method for watershed management planning and it integrates land use/cover, hydrological data, soils, slope, roads, and other spatial data. The land is divided into three categories: Conservation Priority Index (CPI) land, Restoration Priority Index (RPI) land, and Stormwater Management Priority Index (SMPI) land. Within each category, spatial factors are rated based on their influence on water resources and critical areas can be identified for soil conservation, water quality protection and improvement. The WebWMPI has user-friendly client side graphical interfaces which enable the public to interactively run the server side Geographic Information System to evaluate different scenarios for watershed planning and management. The system was applied for Dry Run Creek watershed (Cedar Falls, Iowa, US) as a demonstration and it can be easily used in other watersheds to prioritize crucial areas and to increase public participation for soil and water conservation projects.
文摘This paper is concerned with the development of product data management (PDM) systems--WPDM systems based on web technologies. As a tool to integrate information, traditional PDM system has many benefits for the companies in such aspects as improving design productivity, better control over projects and so on. With the maturing of web technologies, the advantages of WPDM system are obvious. We will show these advantages in detail in Part 3. WPDM system is built on three-tier application model to provide security and flexibility, they are back-end, middle layer and front-end. The basic designs in each layer will be briefly introduced in Part 4. In the future, WPDM will be extended to integrate with other applications to provide a complete web-based engineering environment.
文摘To align customer demand with suppliers for reducing work in process and supply costs and increasing re sp onsiveness to customer requirements, a real time collaborative supply chain mana gement system is essential. A solution to the realization of supply chain manage ment capable of timely responding to customer requirements is proposed. Workflow automation is used to manage process interaction across enterprises; Agents can be automatically invoked by supply chain workflow process and are used to pro mote the flexibility and reconfigurability by providing the mechanism in support of distributed compution in an enterprises to meet the requirements of performa nce and business dynamics. An approach that supports agent based workflow proce ss in a supply chain is proposed. And the coordination mechanism between agents is also discussed.
基金Project supported by the NSF(No.IIS-0812578),the Grant from IBM to UCSB,and the Grant from China Scholarship Council
文摘Data-centric modeling approach for workflow specification and design has received considerable attention from research and development communities.An architecture for a workflow management system named EZFLOWS was outlined.Key components and research issues associated with the development of EZFLOWS were discussed.
文摘Nurses are at the forefront of providing healthcare services to individuals of all age groups and with varying medical conditions.Aside from the critical knowledge and technical skills from nursing science,advancement in technology has assisted nurses in delivering quality nursing care by streamlining workflow processes and ensuring that data can easily be retrieved or modified.Electronic health records dramatically changed the landscape of the healthcare practice by providing an electronic means to store data and for healthcare professionals to retrieve and manipulate health information in a secured and collaborative environment.But with the nature of data being stored in the electronic health records,nurses still need to organize and process these data into relevant information,knowledge or wisdom so they can provide better holistic care to patients.This discussion paper details the role of content management systems in addressing nursing workflow by providing a mechanism for nurses to be developers themselves,and not just users or consumers of health innovative technologies.By using content management systems as platform for application development,nurses or other healthcare professionals,may be able to address problems with internal workflow without having to incur huge amounts in software development,or having to extensively learn programming languages.
基金This project is supported by AS/400 Research Foundation of IBM of China (No. 2001).
文摘A product-oriented process workflow management model is proposed based on themulti-agent technology. The autonomy, inter-operability, scalability and flexibility of agent areused to cooperate the whole process planning and achieve the full share of resource and information.Thus, unnecessary waste of human labor, time and work is reduced and the computer-aided processplanning (CAPP) system's adaptability and stability are improved. In the detailed implementation,according to the products' BOM (Bill of materials) in structural design, the task assignment,management control, automatic process making, process examination and process sanction are combinedinto a unified management to make it convenient for the adjustment, control and management.
文摘Purpose:.To explore and establish a rational management workflow for a free cataract surgery program for the poor population in urban China, aiming to improve surgical efficiency.Methods:.Establishment of a management workflow mainly includes system design and an auxiliary facility. System design procedures consist of outpatient screening, outpatient physical examination,.surgical procedures,.and postoperative clinic visits. After establishing the management workflow of cataract surgery, a free cataract surgery program was conducted for 15 months.Results: Based upon the established management mode, 9003 patients received preoperative screening and 2358 underwent cataract surgery..During the 15-month investigation,.each procedure was successfully conducted,.the efficiency of screening and operation attained the highest standards in China,.and no surgical malpractice occurred intraoperatively.Conclusion:.In this study,.a management workflow for cataract surgery was designed for a poverty relief project in urban China. During the 15-month project, the degree of patient satisfaction was enhanced without disrupting the normal practice and safety of the sponsor hospital.
文摘With the vehement development of global competition , Agile Supply Chain (ASC) becomes an effective approach that supports dynamic ent erprise alliance and realizes agile manufacturing, as for the enterprises to cap ture market opportunities rapidly and strengthen their anti-risk ability. As Ag ile Supply Chain System (ASCS) is dynamic and distributed, the realization of it ’s processes needs to be much flexible. Often in Agile Supply Chain System (ASCS ), there are many dynamic tasks, many changes of the processes, and cooperative workflows, which need the workflows able to be adjusted agilely and smoothly, no t much affecting others. This paper will propose a flexible workflow management for achieving the agility and compatibility. At the first of the paper, we will discuss the situation in which Agile Supply C hain System is applied, and then we will elaborate the characteristics of Agile Supply Chain System. So with that, the shortcomings of the process managements t hat are, at present, used in Supply Chain Systems will be displayed clearly. The n, the proposal will be given in the paper, to resolve the problems in the prese nt process management in ASCS. We will see supply chain systems implemented mult i-agent-based technology to adapt to the dynamic environment, however in many systems, coordination of the workflows is executed by the explicit messages comm unicated between the agents. This will lead to a tightly coupled system. To over come it, the paper suggests the workflow management in agent-based ASCS using t he Events-Triggering mechanism, instead of the explicit messages. We create Eve nts-Triggering contents and rules, having push-pull mechanism, event-state se t and triggering-conditions, and store them in the distributed database subject ed to the corresponding agents. Adjusting the Events-Triggering data will be us ed to adapt to the dynamic tasks and the changes of processes. In sum, we will p resent the methods of process modeling, the system structure, and the executing -mechanism of the flexible workflow management we propose in the paper. Also, t he paper outlines several exception-handling policies for the flexible workflow management, in succession. And at the final of the paper, we discuss the realiz ation of the flexible workflow management in Agile Supply Chain System. The flex ible workflow management will be implemented using CORBA services and Java techn ology for the distributed systems. CORBA is chosen as the specification of distr ibuted electronic data exchange, and Java as the construction tool of the system . The framework of the flexible workflow management constructed on them is showe d in the paper.
基金Supported by the Doctorate Degree Program Foundation of the State Education Ministry (yu ji[2003] 172 ) and the Scientific Research Foundation for Returned Overseas Chinese Scholars under the State Education Ministry (jiao wai si[2003] 14)
文摘A great deal of benefits can be achieved if information and process are integrated within the building design project. This paper aims to establish a prototype of workflow management system for construction design project through the application of workflow technology. The composition and function of prototype is presented to satisfy the needs of information share and process integration. By integrating all subsystems and modules of the prototype, the whole system can deal with design information-flow modeling, emulating and optimizing, task planning and distributing, automatic tracking and monitoring, as well as network service, etc. In this way, the collaborative design environment of building design proiect is brought into being.
文摘On the basis of PDM(product data management) definition and its connotation, the factors to ensure implementation success are analyzed. The definition phase, analysis phase, design phase, build and test phase, and post production phase during PDM implementation are described. The implementation is divided into ten processes, which consist of the above different phases. The relationships between phases and processes are illustrated. Finally, a workflow is proposed to guide the implementing at a fixed price.
文摘In order to enable both manufacturers and suppliers to be profitable on today’s highly competitive markets, manufacturers and suppliers must be quick in selecting best partners establishing strategic relationship, and collaborating with each other so that they can satisfy the changing competitive manufacturing requirements. A web-based supplier relationships (SR) framework is therfore proposed using multi-agent systems and linear programming technique to reduce supply cost, increase flexibility and shorten response time. Web-based SR approach is an ideal platform for information exchange that helps buyers and suppliers to maintain the availability of materials in the right quantity, at the right place, and at the right time, and keep the customer-supplier relationship more transparent. A multi-agent system prototype was implemented by simulation, which shows the feasibility of the proposed architecture.
基金the National Key Project Foundation of China (No. 2001BA201A0605) and partially supported by the State Key Lab for Mechanical Transmission..
文摘A new web product data management architecture is presented. The three-tier web architecture and Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) are combined to build the web-based product data management (PDM) system which includes three tiers: the user services tier, the business services tier, and the data services tier. The client service component uses the server-side technology, and Extensible Markup Language (XML) web service which uses SOAP as the communication protocol is chosen as the business service component. To illustrate how to build a web-based PDM system using the proposed architecture, a case PDM system which included three logical tires was built. To use the security and central management features of the database, a stored procedure was recommended in the data services tier. The business object was implemented as an XML web service so that client could use standard internet protocols to communicate with the business object from any platform. In order to satisfy users using all sorts of browser, the server-side technology and Microsoft ASP.NET was used to create the dynamic user interface.
文摘In concurrent engineering, effective process management is the key to improve the efficiency and quality of product development. Although in project management system, workflow management system and PDM system, process management functions are provided, they can not meet the needs of product development. In this paper, we integrate the project management, workflow management and product management technique together and a concurrent engineering oriented integrated product development process management system is proposed. The system structure, integrated product development model and running method are introduced. The practice proves this system is powerful in supporting product development process.
文摘Workflow management is an important aspect in CSCW at present. The elementary knowledge of workflow process is introduced, the Petri nets based process modeling methodology and basic definitions are provided, and the analysis and verification of structural and behavioral correctness of workflow process are discussed. Finally, the algorithm of verification of process definitions is proposed.
文摘The interactive task allocation process between workflow management system(WFMS) and resources in real bussiness is analyzed. A series of fundamental workflow resource allocation patterns (WRAPs) are identified. These patterns provide the basis for the design of the more adaptive workflow system. A WRAP framework is proposed to provide a referenced classification system for further pattern extensions.