An inter-organization workflow management system for virtual enterprises

Abstract

There is a need for organizations to have synergy by joining their local workflow processes. These processes may have not developed with the consideration of any virtual enterprise. We propose a Process Meta model to integrate the processes by introducing a new concept of Partial View of Virtual Process. Using this approach, local processes of participating organizations could be integrated with other external processes quickly. The procedure of joining and disjoining virtual enterprise is transparent. To be able to adopt this approach, architecture and implementation of a virtual process enactment service is presented. This framework is a set of collaborating intra-organizational workflow management systems nodes. We also present internal architecture and implementation of such intra-organizational workflow management system a?? called HISFlow. A theoretical foundation is also laid down to exploit workflow history information based on our proposed meta model for a virtual process.