Date[February 22, 1999              ]       Recordnr[        ]
Who[ Wijnand Derks, telecommunication company Holland, KPN research
Title[Requirements for  WfMS and Cross-organisational Logistics,  a case 
study

Place[ WACC'99, workshop, for publication see workshop directory: 
http://www.zurich.ibm.com/%7Ehlu/WACCworkshop/

Keywords[ 

Summary[ 
Domain: delivering parcel. Well suited for WfMS. Nice, because well 
defined control flow, data flow, and physical flow.
Problem: flexibility, scalability.
1) enhanced services, increased complexity
There are centralized approaches like ERP by SAP, BAAN, Oracle. These 
are only approaches for one single organization.

2) integration with customers
3) outsourcing to logistics partners, remote and foreign departments
4) autonomous subchains where centralised control is not possible

Example of the processes involved in logistics of parcel delivery (also 
in position paper?): could be useful for CHAIMS.
For various processes/tasks more than one unit is involved, e.g. TNT-
domestic for picking up, but also costomer service and maybe even a 
local pick-up for rural areas. Transport to the airport is also under 
the responsiblity under TNT-domestic, carried out through a local 
carrier, and controled also by customer service. TNT international is 
then responsibility for the delivery to another country. 

Tradiotanal approach to automation: customer service as top-layer would 
take over control over all subunits. Yet: these subunits would never 
allow it, some even are organizational not under customer service. Also: 
too large subunits to be controled by worldwide centralized system.

Other approach 1: central co-ordinator:
- centralised control
- co-ordination has overall process specificaton, this could be e.g. 
customer service. 
This could be possible within TNT-worldwide, but forget about other 
companies. There it is not enforceable. They have own process 
specifications.

Other approach 2: no co-ordinatior:

==> ideally both control model are supported.

Requirements:
- different control models: central control and distributed control
- interfacing: exporting process schema with entry and exit points in 
schema where partner can plug in his processes, common language for 
process models (similar to FDBMS?)
- monitoring facility: process status, level of disclosure
- control facility: changing puck-up an ddeliery address, ATTENTION: 
trade-off between flexibility and autonomy