Research On Modeling And Realization Of Flexible Workflow

With the advancement of management technique of manufacturing industry, especially rapid development of computer and network technology, facing the furious market competition and individualized and diversified customer needs, manufacturing industry has to enhance their competitiveness by optimizing process of operation management and reconstructing efficiently kinds of resources. The workflow management is an operation process based on enterprises that decomposes the operation process of enterprise management into defined tasks and roles, and implements and monitors according to certain rules and process, which helps improve work efficiency and management level of enterprise. The occurrence of workflow technology has attracted great focus, especially on improving flexibility of workflow. Many researches and explorations have been done by scholars from home and abroad. The flexible workflow has great impact on improving ability of operation processing ability and it's adaptability to dynamic environment change.This paper, taking the discrete manufacturing industry as research background, introducing the flexible workflow technology, constructing a sales system based on flexible workflow, presents theory and method of realization of flexible workflow through two phases of workflow modeling and implementation. Major research contents of the paper are as follows:1. Traditional workflow makes use of modeling tool to define model of workflow and then explain workflow model through workflow engine. Model is fixed once it is defined. However in normal running of enterprise, there are dynamic changes occasionally during the operation process. The business target of an enterprise, the environment and customer needs keep changing. Some operation business become unpredictable and exception may happen even when it is predicted. Therefore, this paper introduces flexible technique based on traditional workflow, which facilitates workflow's responding ability to change and exception.2. Construct a workflow modeling method based on combination of workflow net and ECA regulations by introducing Petri net, workflow net and ECA regulations. Use flexible event to encapsulate the uncertain factors during process of enterprise operation. In instantial events, select event according to combination rules and compose sub process.3. Aiming at the change and exception happen during implementation of workflow, this paper researches the strategy and method of improving work flow flexibility through these two angles, promotes a workflow instance migration approach to solve dynamic change of workflow. On the basis of Microsoft WWF(Windows Workflow Foundation)platform, it may update operation process dynamically.4. According to aforementioned theory and strategy, a sales system based on flexible workflow management is designed under Microsoft Visual Studio 2008, which introduces systematic structure, main functional module and database structure of system.To sum up, flexible workflow technology is mainly reflected on two aspects of flexible modeling and flexible implementation. By providing a mechanism that dynamically deals with change and exception in operation process, it may increase the dynamic, flexibility and adaptability of workflow management system, which in turn enhances operation processing capacity and quick responding ability to dynamic environment change of an enterprise.