Inhaltsangabe:Abstract: Conventional workflow management focuses on improving the efficiency of business processes within one organization. However, processes should not only be supported within the enterprise, but also when crossing organizational boundaries, e.g. in order to support new forms of collaborations as virtual enterprises. Due to the different nature of interorganizational workflows, conventional workflow technology cannot be directly applied. The most important requirement specific to interorganizational workflow systems is obviously that they are able to deal with heterogeneity and that it is not too expensive to achieve interoperability. Also maintaining the privacy of internal processes is a major concern, and security issues should be addressed. This diploma thesis gives an introduction to conventional and interorganizational workflow management, their aspects and concepts. It elaborates the requirements relevant for interorganizational workflow systems, describes the most important approaches, projects, and initiatives that currently exist in the area of interorganizational workflows, including XML-based approaches, the standards of the WfMC, electronic marketplaces and electronic contracting. An evaluation of these approaches based on criteria derived from the requirements and other characteristics shows the differing strengths and weaknesses. The XML-based approaches provide standards for the process interfaces, and can cope with heterogeneous environments very well. Some of them even allow spontaneous commerce with new trading partners without custom integration. Traditional EDI is in principle similar, but has many disadvantages. The standards of the WfMC enable integration with a very low effort, if they are followed by software providers. But privacy and security are potential problem areas and the models of interoperability that realistically can be supported are simple. Electronic marketplaces and electronic contracting are ideal, if a high number of business partners has to be supported and the services are chosen dynamically depending on the situation. But these services have to be comparable with rather simple interfaces. Inhaltsverzeichnis:Table of Contents: 1.Introduction1 2.Workflow Management4 2.1Requirements on WfMSs6 2.2Workflow Modeling8 2.2.1The Functional Aspect: Workflows and Activities8 2.2.2The Operational Aspect: Applications9 2.2.3The Behavioral Aspect: Control Flow10 2.2.4The Informational [...]

ABSTRACT: As the global marketplace becomes more and more competitive, business organizations often need to team up and operate as a virtual enterprise in order to utilize the best of their resources for achieving their common business goals. Since the business environment of a virtual enterprise is highly dynamic, it is necessary to develop a workflow management technology that is capable of handling dynamic workflows across enterprise boundaries. This dissertation describes a dynamic workflow model and a dynamic workflow management system for modeling and controlling the execution of inter-organizational business processes. In this work, all the sharable tasks performed by people or automated systems in a virtual enterprise are defined and published as e-services. The business process models of inter-organizational workflows are defined in terms of, among other things, compositions of e-services provided by the participating organizations. A dynamic workflow model (DWM) is introduced to enable the specification of dynamic properties associated with a business process model. It extends the underlying model of the Workflow Management Coalition's Workflow Process Definition Language (WPDL) by adding connectors, events, triggers, and rules as its modeling constructs, encapsulating activity definitions and allowing e-service requests to be included as a part of the activity specification. The workflow management system makes use of a business event and rule server to trigger business rules during the enactment of a workflow process model to enforce business constraints and policies and/or to modify the process model at run-time. We also introduce a constraint-based, dynamic service binding mechanism to dynamically bind e-service requests to e-services that satisfy some constraint specifications.

This book offers a comprehensive introduction to workflow management, the management of business processes with information technology. By defining, analyzing, and redesigning an organization's resources and operations, workflow management systems ensure that the right information reaches the right person or computer application at the right time. The book provides a basic overview of workflow terminology and organization, as well as detailed coverage of workflow modeling with Petri nets. Because Petri nets make definitions easier to understand for nonexperts, they facilitate communication between designers and users. The book includes a chapter of case studies, review exercises, and a glossary. A special Web site developed by the authors, www.workflowcourse.com, features animation, interactive examples, lecture materials, exercises and solutions, relevant links, and other valuable resources for the classroom.

A comprehensive introduction to workflow management.

"This book aids managers in the transformation of organizations into world-class competitors through business process applications"--Provided by publisher.

In this volume Gerold Riempp examines the interaction of different workflow management systems (WFMS) in geographically-distributed and legally-separate organisations. This is an emerging field of research known as Wide Area Workflow Management (WAWM). He examines the technical and managerial aspects of workflow management via a framework which he has developed to describe the problems involved in WAWM and to find viable solutions. Based on this theoretical framework, the author also develops a prototype software framework - the Wide Area GroupFlow System - to demonstrate the solutions via practical software tools. The tools will be available to the reader via the WWW. Also included are the results of case studies from some of the 15 developers who have been using this software over the past two years.

Enhances libraries worldwide through top research compilations from over 250 international authors in the field of e-business.