THE APPLICATION OF WORKFLOW MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS IN DISTRIBUTED MANUFACTURING

摘要

Workflow Management is a fast evolving technology which is increasingly being exploited by businesses in a variety of industries. One of the major applications of workflow management systems is within modern distributed manufacturing organisations, in which there is a growing requirement for "co-ordination software tools" to establish an environment that enables the sub-systems of a manufacturing organisation to function autonomously with the appropriate support for their mutual interdependencies. This paper identifies the enhancement required in the functionality of existing commercial workflow management systems to be used as appropriate co-ordination software tools within distributed manufacturing applications.