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Workflow Process Automation with Automatic Status Reporting II

The Automated Work Process Planning project was formed between industry and the Tobyhanna Army Depot (TYAD) to address industry and depot needs to shorten cycle times, reduce out of stock rates while lowering pipeline inventory requirements, provide improved visibility of in process orders and enhance resource planning capabilities. Industrial participants included Caterpillar Inc. and Boeing Rocketdyne as end users, and Concentus and Auto-trol as technology providers.  The specific goal was to develop, and demonstrate, a cost effective, automated workflow planning system through development of a business process-driven Information Technology (IT) architecture with the capability to continuously respond to change as tasks are performed.  This required the integration of legacy Workflow, PDM and Project Management systems.

The project resulted in development of a software product, WorkBridge.^tm that has been commercialized by Concentus.  WorkBridge^tm utilizes a collection of web processes with pre-defined business rules for the flow of decision making where very little is known up front about the incoming request.  The collection of processes is designed for extremely dynamic environments allowing for flexibility and business activity monitoring at the same time.  The business rules associated with this product feature propagate information and actual performance across the process tasks enabling traceability of information from enterprise legacy databases included in developing the response.  Project status and alerts are readily visible to the end users who can be empowered to react quickly by making changes to resources assigned to future tasks, inserting new processes, and using some of the ad-hoc features.  Training and related knowledge can be delivered with each task to be completed.  This framework is customizable and promotes the use of process templates  providing significant reuse with reduced time to deploy. 

Program Manager: Bill Waddell, (231) 264-9774, wwadd49648@chartermi.net