CrossFlow: Cross-Organizational Workflow Management for Service Outsourcing in Dynamic Virtual Enterprises

In this report, we present the approach to cross-organizational workflow management of the CrossFlow project. CrossFlow is a European research project aiming at the support of cross-organizational workflows in dynamic virtual enterprises. The cooperation in these virtual enterprises is based on dynamic service outsourcing specified in electronic contracts. Service enactment is performed by dynamically linking the workflow management infrastructures of the involved organizations. Extended service enactment support is provided in the form of cross-organizational transaction management and process control, advanced quality of service monitoring, and support for high-level flexibility in service enactment. CrossFlow technology is realized on top of a commercial workflow management platform and applied in two real-world scenarios in the contexts of a logistics and an insurance company

CrossFlow: Integrating Workflow Management and Electronic Commerce

The CrossFlow1 architecture provides support for cross-organisational workflow management in dynamically established virtual enterprises. The creation of a business relationship between a service provider organisation performing a service on behalf of a consumer organisation can be made dynamic when augmented by virtual market technology, the dynamic configuration of the contract enactment infrastructures, and the provision of fine grained service monitoring and control. Standard ways of describing services and contracts can be combined with matchmaking technology to create a virtual market for such service provision and consumption. A provider can then advertise its services in the market and consumers can search for a compatible business partner. This provides choice in selecting a partner and allows the deferment of the decision to a point in time where it can be made on the most up-to-date requirements of the consumer and service offers in the market. The penalty for deferred decision making is the time to set up the infrastructure in each organisation for the dynamically established contract. Thus, a further aspect of CrossFlow was to exploit the contract in the dynamic and automatic configuration of the contract enactment and supervision infrastructures of the respective organisations and in linking them in a dynamic fashion. The electronic contract, which results from the agreement between the newly established business partners, completely specifies the intended collaboration between them. Given the importance of the business process enacted by the provider, this includes fine-grained monitoring and control to allow tight co-operation between the organisations

Supporting Collaborative Communication in a Multi-layer Meta-process Model for Evolutionary Shared Workflows

A key planning activity within a Virtual Enterprise (VE) is to establish agreed inter-organizational processes. This activity, or meta-process, has to allow for gradual evolution of the VE processes and for a multi layer development from informal business agreements to precise workflows. To support this meta-process, a collaborative electronic whiteboard supported by a tuplespace is proposed. The whiteboard supports a mixed graphical and text interface, with support for keeping track of the changes made. The participating organizations upload workflow definitions from their own IT systems into the tuplespace. Workflows are then discussed, modified and evolved before being downloaded again and mapped to the partners’ individual systems

Adaptives Workflow-Management für kooperierendeWorkflows - ein Überblick

Der Einsatz von Workflow-Management-Systemen zur Ausführung von Geschäftsprozessen nimmt vor allem durch die Verbreitung des E-Commerce immer mehr zu. Gerade der elektronische Handel ist durch die Kooperation zwischen verschiedenen Unternehmen (Business2Business-E-Commerce) bzw. zwischen Unternehmen und Kunden (Business2Consumer-E-Commerce) geprägt. Workflow-Systeme müssen deshalb kooperative Prozesse zwischen unterschiedlichen Unternehmen unterstützen. Eine weitere Anforderung ist, dass sie unerwartete Fehler und Ausnahmen während der Workflow-Ausführung behandeln können. In diesem Artikel werden zuerst Kooperationsformen für Workflows und Anforderungen an Workflow-Systeme für die Unterstützung kooperierender Workflows erarbeitet. Anschließend werden verschiedene Forschungsansätze verglichen, um einen Überblick über den gegenwärtigen Stand der Forschung und Entwicklung auf dem Gebiet kooperierenderWorkflow-Management-Systeme zu erhalten

Dynamic Interconnection of Enterprise Workflow Processes

Colloque avec actes et comité de lecture. internationale./http://www.taylorandfrancis.co.uk/International audienceDue to business process automation development, process interconnection becomes an important matter. Actually, process interconnection mechanisms are indispensable to co-ordinate business processes within and beyond organisation boundaries, aiming, for instance, to strength awareness inside virtual enterprises, to facilitate multinational e-transactions, etc. Therefore, thinking and proposing mechanisms to ensure interconnection between organisational business processes is becoming a hot research topic. Actually, existing business process modelling and enactment systems (workflow systems, project management tools, shared agendas, to do lists, etc.) have been mainly developed to suit enterprise internal needs. Thus most of these systems are not adapted to inter-enterprise co-operation. As we are interested in workflow process integration, we aim, through this paper, to provide a model supporting dynamic inter-enterprise workflow process interconnection.We consider the interconnection of enterprise workflow processes as the management of a workflow of workflows in which several heterogeneous workflow management systems (WFMS) coexist. This paper introduces our process interconnection model, its implementation, and its validation through an experimentation