近期許多企業處於全球激烈競爭的環境下,必須針對快速改變的顧客需求來進行有效的反應,使得企業在進行新產品開發時,採用了新的產品開發模式:協同設計。而一個完整的產品開發設計工作流程,必須橫跨各家公司的工作流程來作為工作流程的子流程,此時就會碰上動態流程管理方面的問題。雖然目前已經有許多關於動態流程管理的研究,但是這些研究,並沒有考慮到流程變動對正在使用流程的使用者造成的困擾,例如使用者無法即時使用新版流程。因此本研究嘗試在工作流程管理系統中加入組態管理中的版本概念,藉此來解決在面對流程變動時使用者的困擾。 本研究運用組態管理中設計文件版本的控制來解決使用者的困擾,透過組態基準線的建立,紀錄流程步驟的狀態並建置成一個樣板,使用者使用該流程時,系統便會複製樣板以作為使用者使用的依據。當發生流程變更之後,系統便會比對樣板與複製樣板間的版本與細步差異,讓使用者可以了解有哪些步驟不同,並決定是否要使用變更後的流程。 本研究以工作流程管理聯盟制定的一般化工作流程架構為基礎,用JADE開發平台來實作一工作流程變動管理雛型系統,藉由代理人技術建立分散式環境下訊息傳遞的機制,並以一個情境驗証系統的可行性。情境的結果顯示出使用者確實可以立即使用變更後的流程步驟,縮短產品的開發時程。由此可知本系統可以因應企業內部或共同開發產品等各種流程當中,如新夥伴的加入、新技術的研發所造成的流程變動,讓流程的使用者在經過流程變動之後,可以直接選擇使用變更後的流程,進而增強企業的營運與往外拓展的能力。
Recently, it is essential for companies to response effectively to fast-changing customer demands in the competitive global environment. Enterprises apply a new product development model: collaborative design in developing of new products. The complete product design and development workflow includes sub-workflows in each participating enterprise. This workflow system should be able to manage workflow changes caused by new partner joins, new technologies, and new strategies. Therefore, the system needs dynamic workflow management. One major issue not being well discussed is the effects of workflow changes. For example: users in the middle of the designing process may not be suitable to use the new process immediately. Therefore, this study attempts to introduce the version concept of configuration management into the workflow management system to solve this problem. Version control of design documents in configuration management was proposed to solve the problem. The baseline of each workflow was established and the status of each task in the process could be recorded. Users may choose the preferred workflow and the system generates an active workflow based on the baseline. While workflow changed, the system would revise the versions of the baseline and its steps. Users of a revised workflow could notice changes of the workflow and steps with version differences, and then they might decide whether to use the changed process or not. In this study, a workflow-change management prototype system was implemented by using JADE development platform and the generalized workflow architecture developed Workflow Management Coalition. Agent technology was applied to build a distributed environment with information passing ability. An experiment was conducted to verify the feasibility of this system. The result showed that the user could immediately use the changed tasks in the workflow, and then the product development time could be decreased. The user of this system can choose to use new processes or not, thereby business operations could be more flexible.