The competitions in a globalized market demand maximizing the efficiency of enterprise activities. In the face of such challenge, companies are taking several measures such as business process reengineering or collaboration product commerce. These measures require specifying the overall enterprise activities. However, since most modeling methods focus on a specific level of activities, i.e. on high-level activities or low-level ones, overall enterprise modeling is difficult. Besides, as various modeling methods are used for each company, sharing process information is not easy.
This research tries to solve this problem by modeling enterprise activities in a systematic and integrated way. We propose an XML-based process modeling language with a data expression format that can be used in internet environments. This is appropriate since the process information exchange among companies is now conducted through the internet. We also suggest XML Schema for process information exchange.
Our approach employs HF-EAM modeling method, which can model enterprise activities from abstract level to implementation level in a systematic and integrated way, thereby modeling overall enterprise activities and uses XPDL, which is an international standard language for workflow management suggested by WfMC. We also provide information needed for activity modeling, e.g. information on various activity patterns, information needed for workflow runtime and workflow interoperability, process template information needed to express uncertainty in workflow process execution, and information needed to show if-then rules for workflow system operation. Based on this information, we provide ERD and tables to show entities, attributes, and their relationships, along with XML Schema for process information exchange.
