Research On Theories & Techniques Of Workflow Management In Collaborative Development Environment

As the development of economy globalization, manufacturing enterprises realize the necessity of transition from competing to cooperating with each other in order to grasp the new market opportunities when they face the international competition. To adapt to the change, Collaborative Product Development has become the main trend in the field of design. The characteristics that distinguish it from other design methods are concurrent ness and cooperation. As a strong tool of process management, workflow management is one of the key technologies to support the implementation of CPD. The research of it can short the product development time, improve the quality of design, reduce the product cost and improve the quality of the service that will lead the great enhancement of the competition capability of the manufacturing enterprises.In this dissertation, the architecture of workflow management system is proposed to meet the requirements of the application in CPD environment, which will establish a strong foundation for the further research. Then the key techniques to build the system, including workflow modeling, runtime control and integration with project management, are discussed in detail in the next parts of the dissertation. The workflow infrastructure is established using distributed object technology to support the architecture in the cooperation environment of HAD (heterogeneous, autonomous, distributed).Workflow Modeling is the first step to implement the workflow management. The paper firstly introduces theproduct-activity-organization process model oriented to the CPD environment, then construct the workflow model by means of graphical description and script description, which support the workflow feedback and dynamic adjustment effectively and accord with the standard of the process definition set by workflow management coalition. These methodsused will ensure the realization of the process integration and cooperation in the CPD environment.Workflow Runtime Control is to guarantee the operations effectively and efficiently run in the workflow management. The paper analyzes the requirements of workflow runtime control in CPD environment, constructs the runtime control model of workflow engine and studies in detail its implementation using the following three methods: rule control, time control and organization control. Formalization description of Event-Condition-Action rules and its application are researched to improve the workflow flexibility. Workflow key activities and their computation based on the workflow time parameter are discussed to strengthen the workflow response ability. Then, different effect of CPD environment to the role based access control is studied to increase the workflow adaptation. All the research ensures workflow run exactly and drive the data flow and operation flow powerfully.The integration of workflow management and project management is inevitable trend in collaborative product development. As a project, the development's characteristics are analyzed and the project management is discussed to build the architecture oriented to the CPD environment. Then, the integration solution is put forward by the model conversion between the project model and the workflow model, which will enhance the automation degree of workflow management. In the end, capability maturity model is introduced to provide the implementation frame for the process management of CPD.We have developed the workflow management system in CPD environment according to the architecture of the system and the theories researched in the dissertation. At the end of this dissertation, the realization methods and their application in the system are introduced. The endeavor of this dissertation establishes the basis for the computer supported collaborative product development.