Collaborative workflow solution for distributed product development

Abstract

To maintain competitive edge among increasingly complicated product activities, joint efforts from varied functional groups are required. Information from marketing, sales, engineering, sourcing, or even consumer should be cross-referenced. Moreover, predefined workflows can facilitate efficient collection of distributed information. Traditional workflow solutions, however, can only provide a simple e-form for a workflow execution. Such workflow solutions merely offer modeling approval-based workflow (A WF), such as drawing reviews or absence applications. In contrast, unlike traditional workflow, a collaborative-based workflow (CWF) in product development process requires complicated e-forms with manifold views for a workflow execution. This paper illustrates the framework of collaborative workflow solution, which can be applied to model workflow utilized in distributed product development. To fulfill the varied business requirements, the paper also attempts to achieve a dynamic and efficient construction of complicated e-forms in collaborative workflow solution. Other mechanisms such as routing definition and authority setup are also explained. Finally, an example of new product development execution is introduced to explain the actual practice of collaborative workflow concept. The major contribution of this paper is to propose a coding-free framework for CWF. Compared to the traditional hard-coding method, the construction time for CWF system can be reduced significantly with the assistance of modeling tool. Time reduction on developing e-systems, in this regard, is a very important issue for most modern e-industries. The concept in this paper can direct a global enterprise to efficiently construct workflow management system for global collaboration.