An innovative framework of collaborative‐based workflow in Development Chain Management

Currently, most product development procedures have been characterized as unnecessarily complicated. To maintain a competitive edge and to simplify the procedures, joint efforts from different functional groups play such crucial role. Specifically, information from marketing, sales, engineering, sourcing, and manufacturing should be cross‐referenced. In addition, adopting pre‐defined workflows contributes to efficient collection of distributed information. Moreover, unlike traditional workflow, a collaborative‐based workflow (CWF) in product development process boasts of complicated workflow forms with manifold views for a workflow execution. Traditional workflow solutions, for instance, can only transmit a workflow form through different actors. Such workflow solutions merely offer modeling approval‐based workflow (AWF), such as drawing reviews or absence applications. This paper illustrates the framework of CWF solution and proposes its application in the model workflow of a distributed product development system. This framework includes four interrelated modules. They are KM4, AS API, SmartForm, and Workflow Engine. In addition, four visual assistant modeling tools are introduced and they are Data Designer, AppDefinition, Layout Designer, and CWF Builder. To fulfill the varied business requirements, Data Designer, AppDefinition, and Layout Designer attempt to achieve a dynamic and efficient construction of complicated workflow forms in collaborative workflow solution. Other workflow‐related setups, such as defining status diagrams, correspondence persons, and applicatory workflow forms, are accomplished in CWF Builder. The major contribution of this paper lies in the proposing of a framework for CWF and in the introducing of visual tools for CWF modeling. 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 information systems, in this regard, is a very important issue for most modern industries. The concept in this paper can direct a global enterprise to efficiently construct workflow management system for global collaboration.