E-business automates the overall activities of a company and allows distributed systems to communicate their information. Process automation and information sharing improve a company’s productivity and responsiveness, while Business-to-Business (B2B) workflow systems electronically aid the progress of business processes among trading partners, and also help companies to monitor and administrate their process execution. This study analyzes the technologies and standards for B2B workflow integration, and extracts a reference model for B2B workflow integration. Based on the reference model, three approaches to B2B workflow integration will be introduced here. In addition, we have developed a prototype system of one approach and have illustrated an example for B2B workflow integration. The result of our research can help business partners understand the workflow standards and the messaging technologies for B2B workflow integration, and also help them understand how to implement workflow integration systems that are appropriate to their e-business environments.
Many companies have automated their business processes by workflow management systems (WFMSs) and have shared their information in distributed information systems by enterprise application integration (EAI) technologies. Process automation and information sharing help to improve their productivity and increase customer responsiveness. This trend is also emerging in B2B environments. In B2B integration, several companies, such as ones in supply chains or virtual enterprises, try to design their collaboration as business process models and automate them with process enactment engines. The current standards, such as XPDL (XML Process Definition Language), Wf-XML, WSCI (Web Service Choreography Interface), and BPEL (Business Process Execution Language), and the technology, such as web services and message-oriented middlewares, allow the B2B integration to be implemented more easily, extensively and robustly.
This paper focuses on design and implementation methods for B2B workflow integration. First of all, we have analyzed the research and standards of B2B workflow integration, and then we have presented a B2B Workflow Reference Model, which contains three main interfaces: Application Interface, Human Interface and B2B Interface.
Based on the reference model, we have also introduced three approaches to B2B workflow integration, the Workflow System Interoperability Approach, the Web Service Choreography Approach and the Multi-Phase Process Composition Approach, with the aim of effectively implementing process integration among business partners. The first approach is used to implement system interoperability by extending existing workflow systems in the B2B area. In this approach, reusable private processes of business partners can interact with each other by using the workflow interoperability standard Wf-XML ( WfMC, 2001a). The second approach is employed to implement loosely coupled process integration based on web services technology. Application services revealed into web services can be coordinated in a collaborative process by using web service choreography languages such as WSCI and BPEL. The last approach is used for implementing multiple-phase process design including both private and public processes. This approach offers high independency and controllability for each area’s processes.
Finally, we have developed ebFMS a prototype system for B2B workflow integration based on the last approach. The system is composed of two process enactment engines: one is a workflow engine for internal workflows as private processes, and the other is a BPM engine for contract processes as public processes. We have illustrated workflow integration with an example of purchase order process through the prototype system.
This paper focused on what should be considered for workflow-based process integration and how we can adopt the recent standard technology, such as web services and business process languages, in implementing process integration. The research we have conducted can help business partners to understand the workflow related standards and the messaging technologies for B2B workflow integration, and to design workflow integration systems that are appropriate to their e-business environments.
Workflow is a core technology of business process integration. A variety of attempts of B2B process integration adopted workflow technology and proposed cross-enterprise frameworks to realize electronic commerce, supply chain management, and virtual enterprises. Moreover, web services technology has changed system architecture of business process integration, as well as e-business application integration.
This paper has focused on design and implementation methods for B2B process integration based on workflow technology and several related standards. We have presented a B2B Workflow Reference Model with three interfaces and requirements of workflow integrations. In addition, we have proposed three approaches to B2B workflow integration to implement process integration among business partners in an effective manner. These approaches are the Workflow System Interoperability Approach, Web Service Choreography Approach, and Multi-Phase Process Composition Approach. Our prototype system adopted the last approach and was developed with the BPEL and XPDL business process languages as well as with the interoperability standard, the Wf-XML messages. The Multi-Phase Process Composition Approach offers independent management and maintenance due to their separate process enactment.
These three approaches and the system we have suggested in this paper can provide the outline for the design and implementation of B2B workflow integration. This research will help potential implementing companies understand the related standards and technology, and will also help them implement the B2B workflow integration that is appropriate to their e-business environments
