Dynamic interconnection of enterprise workflow processes

Due to business process automation development, process interconnection becomes an important matter. Actually, process interconnection mechanisms are indispensable to co-ordinate business processes within and beyond organisation boundaries, aiming, for instance, to strength awareness inside virtual enterprises, to facilitate multinational e-transactions, etc. Therefore, thinking and proposing mechanisms to ensure interconnection between organisational business processes is becoming a hot research topic. Actually, existing business process modelling and enactment systems (workflow systems, project management tools, shared agendas, to do lists, etc.) have been mainly developed to suit enterprise internal needs. Thus most of these systems are not adapted to inter-enterprise co-operation. As we are interested in workflow process integration, we aim, through this paper, to provide a model supporting dynamic inter-enterprise workflow process interconnection. We consider the interconnection of enterprise workflow processes as the management of a “ workflow of workflows” in which several heterogeneous workflow management systems (WFMS) coexist. This paper introduces our process interconnection model, its implementation, and its validation through an experimentation.