A Component-based Product Line for Workflow Management Systems

This paper presents a component-based product line for workflow management systems. The process followed to design the product line was based on the Catalysis method. Extensions were made to represent variability across the process. The domain of workflow management systems has been shown to be appropriate to the application of the product line approach as there are a standard architecture and models established by a regulatory board, the Workflow Management Coalition. In addition, there is a demand for similar workflow management systems but with some different features. The product line architecture was evaluated with Rapide simulation tools. The evaluation was based on selected scenarios, thus, avoiding implementation issues. The strategy that has been used to populate the architecture and experiment with the product line is shown. In particular, the design of the workflow execution manager component is described.

Design of Workflow Subsystem in Drawing Management System

Drawing Management System (DMS) has begun to be used more and more widely in modern enterprise and public institution. It has become one of the necessary tools to improve image file management efficiency. A subsystem model based on three layer of structure is put forward in this paper which meets Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC) standard. The model consists of workflow interaction, process management system, message mechanism, workflow engine. Each module finishes their own job to realize the auto run of DMS’s files.

Research and Application of Collaborative Modeling for Prefecture-County Integrated System Based on Workflow Engine

In order to implement the information flow and verification process in collaborative modeling for prefecture-county integrated system based on workflow, the workflow engine is embedded in the system. On the base of the Workflow Management Coalition Specification and Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA), the paper describes the way to implement the workflow engine, interface service between the engine and CORBA middleware, and the automation of the verification process in the prefecture-county integrated system.

Aircraft Product Data Traceability Technology Based Workflow

Throughout the product lifecycle stages of aircraft development, in order to meet the aircraft product data unique, complete, dynamic, and non-redundant in Product Data Management (PDM) system, and adapt to the effective management of product data in the aircraft development process, the early realization of the aircraft development process co-design. On the basis of the International Workflow Management Coalition (of WFMC) about workflow definition, this paper presents a workflow-based aircraft product data retrospectively theory.

An Extension to a UML Activity Graph from Workflow

This chapter proposes an extension to the activity graph of the Unified Modeling Language (UML) to support the Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC) standard. The definition of a business process has been standardized by the WfMC with the purpose of satisfying the need of interaction and connectivity between process definition tools and different workflow systems. Here, the WfMC meta-model is explained. The UML activity diagrams, used for the business process modeling, support less detail than the WfMC standard. In this chapter, an extension of the UML’s activity graph meta-model is proposed, and its formalization using the workflow meta-model is defined. The purpose of this chapter is to obtain an extension of UML to support the workflow process definition without changing the standard with the same expressive power as the WfMC. It increments the expressive power of the activity diagrams so that the business processes modeled with the UML notation can be executed by a workflow engine.

Workflow Management Based on Mobile Agent Technology

Nowadays Information Systems (IS) are designed for individual task execution control allowing coordinating, monitoring, and supporting the logistical aspects of a business process, in other words, the IS has to manage the flow of work through the organization. The WorkFlow Management represents a critical issue for achieving enterprise competitiveness among organizations. Many companies have realized that the business processes (BP) within their organizations, and between the companies and their partners have not been clearly described and there are not enough techniques and methods to automate the processes. The Workflow Management Coalition (WFMC) states that workflow (WF) is concerned with the automation of procedures where documents, information, or tasks are passed to the participants according to a defined set of rules to achieve, or contribute to, an overall business goal (WfMC, 1999). Another definition of WF can be found in (Rusinkiewicz & Seth, 1994) where workflows are activities involving the coordinated execution of multiple tasks performed by different processing entities (persons or machines). A task or process involves a piece of work and a process entity which executes the work. Workflow Management (WFM) is a fast evolving technology which is increasingly being exploited by businesses in a variety of industries. Its primary characteristic is the automation of processes involving combinations of human and machine-based activities (Aalst & Hee, 2002), (Aalst, 1998). A Workflow Management System (WFMS) provides procedural automation of a business process by management of the sequence of work activities and the invocation of appropriate human and/or IT resources associated with the various activity steps. Although the most prevalent use of WFMS is within the office environment in staff intensive operations such as insurance, banking, legal and general administrations, etc, it is also applicable to some classes of industrial and manufacturing applications (WfMC, 1995). WFMS needs to integrate other technologies such that agent technology, which provides flexible, distributed, and intelligent solutions for business process management. This work presents a methodology for mobile agentbased WFMS development. The proposed methodology consists of a modular and gradual specification of the system where a mobile agent guides the process through organizational units and executes different tasks. Several mobile agents evolve through the system executing concurrently their assigned task.

A Version Control Approach for Workflow-Alteration in Collaborative Design

The workflow management system should be flexible enough to manage workflow changes caused by new partnerships, new technologies, and new strategies in collaborative design. Therefore, this paper attempts to introduce the version concept of configuration management into the workflow management system to handle this problem. In this study, the baseline is applied to record the sequence of tasks in a workflow and the version number of the baseline is given whenever the workflow is created. Whenever any change happens, the version number of the task or baseline will be modified accordingly. Both version numbers of the baseline and the tasks are checked while the workflow is being processed, so that the user could notice any differences in the tasks or workflow and decides whether to use the newly changed workflow or to keep the old version. A JADE development platform was applied to develop a prototype system and the architecture was based on Workflow Management Coalition. A scenario was shown in this paper to verify the feasibility of this study, and the result showed that users can choose whether to use the modified workflow baseline or not, for any running processes. This approach increases the workflow flexibility for collaborative design projects.