A case study of an inter-enterprise workflow-supported supply chain management system

Doing business over the Internet is very cheap and convenient, which enlarges the view of enterprises and lets the enterprises have more chances to select their partners. To achieve these goals, we need the support of information systems, in which workflow management system is of significance. The inherent characteristics of a workflow system make it suitable to implement the cross organization management. Nowadays, however, workflow systems which support cross organization management are not common. When developing a supply chain management system for a big motorcycle corporation in China, we have to construct an inter-enterprise workflow architecture over Internet by ourselves. The main part of the architecture is a workflow-supported inner supply chain system and an integrated interface, through which the whole supply chain system across several independent enterprises is built and the information exchange is fulfilled. This paper presents how the system is designed and implemented in detail as well as the experiences and lessons gained.