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A complete form of knowledge management system comprises both process management and contents management. Process management is concerned with handling activities to generate and utilize knowledge, whereas contents management deals with knowledge contents themselves. Workflow, considered as a core component of process management, is to define and administer business processes automatically. A knowledge map is a representation tool to visualize knowledge sources and relationships among knowledge artifacts. Noting the crucial needs to integrate process management and contents management and recognizing that previous research has paid little attention to this issue, we propose a framework for developing a workflow‐based knowledge map. The proposed process‐perspective knowledge map takes the structure of processes and tasks defined in workflow into account. We then materialize the framework by developing a prototype and applying it to the car seat design process of the automobile industry. The integration represents an exploratory effort to combine process management and contents management.

This paper aims to discuss in detail a feasible realization method of workflow engine for enterprise information management on the basis of database technology.

Under the guidance of workflow management coalition (WfMC), the data model of the workflow engine is first presented based on the given process model, in which the attributes of process, activity and its relationships with role, application, workflow relation data and transfer condition are marked out. Then the basic control principles of the workflow engine are designed based on the necessary tables of process instances and activity instances, in which the control method of process instance and activity instance are discussed in detail including the creation, startup, management or status evolvement of the instance.

In the research, the workflow engine is successfully programmed as this realization method on the development platform of SQL server 2000 and Visual Studio 2005 and the results show the effectiveness of the workflow engine for inventory information management.

The paper gives a feasible realization method for business process management in enterprises using the advanced workflow technology, which can assign flexibility to the information management and improve the whole performance of an enterprise while facing changing market requirements.

The existing, and still evolving, Internet technologies have, up to now, only been used for paper‐free distribution and hypermedia presentation of electronic documents. But today’s business and research often require more ‐ the compilation of knowledge worked out asynchronously by different distributed knowledge holders. This is in general connected with diverse review and revise processes. Owing to awkward paper‐based information flows lacking in control, this task is often characterized by exceptionally lengthy, spontaneous, unsystematic work, high error frequency and lack of transparency, which results in a lack of quality. Coming from the initial goal of supporting a process‐oriented management of distributed editorial work in the publishing sector ‐ which is analogous to the problem outlined above ‐ INTERFYS is an innovative Internet‐based system concept for making such processes more efficient by applying the concepts of workflow management using Web technologies only. With INTERFYS not only the distribution and presentation, but also the creation process of documents is supported using Internet technologies only. The paper explains and evaluates the conceptual and technical aspects of the System INTERFYS 1.0 which has just been realized and was presented on the CeBIT 1998 in Hanover.

The paper aims to propose a web‐based “intermediation hybrid architecture” for a workflow management system that integrates services by exploiting and combining the advantages of strict centralized topologies that use workflow engines, with totally distributed systems which use agent technologies.

The proposed operational and technical architectures define the combination of a workflow engine and a software agent platform for the appropriate management of inter‐organizational workflow processes. The proposed system is called “hybrid intermediation portal.”

The hybrid system was used in e‐government cases for the management of cross‐border workflows that span across multiple European chambers of commerce and industry. That demonstrated the usefulness of the specific approach in the inter‐organizational workflow management domain.

The approach presented in this paper was implemented and validated in real e‐government cases that proved the advantages of the potential commercial use of the system. Several limitations were located due to the lack of a wide use of web services within governmental organizations.

Concerning security issues, it would be necessary to integrate appropriate security mechanisms without constraining the technical and functional characteristics of the software agents involved.

The contribution of the paper concerns the evolvement of the agent‐enhanced workflow management systems in order to tackle the intelligence issues and the credibility problems concerning the overall control of dispersed inter‐organizational processes.

This paper is a qualitative study of how social sciences faculty construct their research workflows with the help of technological tools. The purpose of this study is to examine faculty scholarly workflows and how both tools and practices support the research process. This paper could inform academic libraries on how to support scholars throughout the research process.

This is a qualitative study case study of ten faculty members from six research universities from the United States and Canada. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and recorded. Atlas.ti was used to code and analyze the transcripts; each participant was a separate case. Descriptive coding was used to identify digital tools used for collaboration; process and descriptive coding was utilized to examine practices in scholarly workflows.

Through case study analysis the results of this study include the role of technology in faculty research workflows. Each workflow was grouped into four categories: information literacy, information management, knowledge management, and scholarly communication. The findings included scholars creating simple workflows for efficiency and collaboration and utilizing workarounds.

The study did not observe faculty in the process of doing research and, thus, only reports on what the researchers say that they do.

The research is unique in that there is almost no research on how social scientists conduct their research workflows and the affordances/impasses of this process.

The purpose of this research is to develop a prototype of agent‐based intelligent workflow system for product design collaboration in a distributed network environment.

This research separates the collaborative workflow enactment mechanisms from the collaborative workflow building tools for flexible workflow management. Applying the XML/RDF (resource description framework) ontology schema, workflow logic is described in a standard representation. Lastly, a case study in collaborative system‐on‐chip (SoC) design is depicted to demonstrate the agent‐based workflow system for the design collaboration on the web.

Agent technology can overcome the difficulty of interoperability in cross‐platform, distributed environment with standard RDF data schema. Control and update of workflow functions become flexible and versatile by simply modifying agent reasoning and behaviors.

When business partners want to collaborate, how to integrate agents in different workflows becomes a critical issues.

Agent technology can facilitate design cooperation and teamwork communication in a collaborative, transparent product development environment.

This research establishes generalized flow logic RDF models and an agent‐based intelligent workflow management system, called AWfMS, based on the RDF schema of workflow definition. AWfMS minimizes barriers in the distributed design process and hence increases design cooperations among partners.

Aims to show that workflow management needs to rethink its basis of discussion in order to meet today's challenges and to provide adequate IT support for heterogeneous workflow networks.

First, the need for flexibility in relating resources in workflow management is examined in more detail. Second, some approaches to managing workflows in heterogeneous networks are inspected and it is found that all of these improve flexibility on the basis of contracting services. Third, it is elaborated how processing by contract supports decentralized resource management through dynamically interrelating social and technical services driven by a cycle (“wheel”) of execution and monitoring, evaluation and demand, as well as selecting and contracting.

Conclusions are drawn for systems architecture and implementation to guide the design of internet‐enabled workflow support.

Important questions for the research agenda are: how can one enrich application‐oriented workflow modelling languages in order to describe processes as consisting of heterogeneous services? How should one design and implement workflow engines which enable the turning of the “wheel” with the support of integrating human activities and technical agency as workflow process services?

The idea of processing by contract may lead to new workflow concepts and technology to meet the challenges of an internet economy based on the “pay as you go” principle.

Whereas the workflow paradigm of the past may be phrased as processing by definition, i.e. process execution according to predefined process patterns and resource relations, the idea of processing by contract is suggested, i.e. a mode of process execution driven by recurrent process evaluation and service contracting.

Several years ago, North Carolina State (NC State) University Libraries technical services department, Acquisitions & Discovery (A&D), merged acquisitions, cataloging, and electronic resources management functions and staff. One intended outcome for the merger included integrating and distributing electronic resources management across all staff positions whereby staff would be trained to manage a larger portion of the life cycle for print and electronic resources. The benefits of a life cycle approach for both print and electronic resources included better staff understanding of resources; staff ownership of packages; and improved staff follow-through, consistency, and ability to troubleshoot. Key positions were reimagined to support this effort. This included the creation of a staff package manager role in the serials unit to provide oversight of e-journal packages, distribute work to staff, and create and maintain an information dashboard (the Electronic Resources Hub) for staff as well as for other stakeholder departments across the libraries. The monographs unit has recently adopted a similar integrated approach to manage NC State's growing collection of e-books. This chapter will outline A&D implementation of two package management models, one for serials and one for monographs; describe the associated tools and technologies used for support; and discuss lessons learned. Benefits will be discussed to illustrate how other libraries might transform their electronic resource management operations by using a package management strategy.

Current workflow management systems (WfMS's) are often too rigid and lead to “chain production” in the office. The paper proposes a number of “tuning measures” to reconfigure an implemented WfMS in such a way that it is more agreeable to the needs of its users.

The “tuning measures” are generated through a creative process that is founded on two theoretical pillars: the job characteristics model, from the domain of job design theory and work psychology, and the assignment and synchronization policies, from the area of workflow management.

By combining theories from both job design theory and workflow management we have developed a number of measures to “tune” WfMS's in a human oriented way. An expert panel has selected the six most promising of these measures. These six measures have been used in the evaluation of three contemporary WfMS's. From this evaluation we concluded that current workflow technology is only partly able to support our measures.

Because of the limited system evaluation, it would be valuable to do a more thorough evaluation of the three systems, have a closer study of the other generated ideas, and to broaden the scope of systems we considered. Additionally, it seems worthwhile to perform an actual validation in practice, i.e. an experiment with real workflow users in a realistic setting.

New in this paper is the focus on people working with WfMS's. The paper tries to go beyond the traditional borders of finding a good support for a business process. It highlights the importance of the human factor in the success of the implementation of a workflow system in a company and gives directions for concrete improvement in order to make working with a WfMS more enjoyable to its users. The proposals stated in the paper are of value to workflow designers, managers and workflow researchers.

Workflow management includes concepts of special interest to the business organization field and for the automation of processes within a company. However, process modeling via workflow specifications and workflow management systems can be applied in any field where a workflow exists. The use of CASE tools provides a great increase in performance in information system development but, on the other hand, these tools do not support group work and make skipped steps possible in a methodology. Applying workflow management systems as a meta‐CASE tool together with the use of cooperative methodologies – that aim to capture user requirements – can help us to solve problems related to shortcomings in monitoring, controls, and audit information system development.