Dynamic business network process management in instant virtual enterprises

Nowadays, business supply chains for the production of complex products or services are likely to involve a number of autonomous organizations. The competitive market requires that these supply chains are highly agile, effective and efficient. Agility and effectiveness are obtained by forming highly dynamic virtual enterprises within supplier networks. We call these instant virtual enterprises (IVEs). The required efficiency of creating and operating IVEs can only be obtained by automated support for design, setup and enactment of business processes within these IVEs. This process support involves the dynamic composition of local processes of network members into global processes at the IVE level. This functionality goes significantly beyond traditional approaches for interorganizational workflow management. The approach, architecture and technology required for this dynamic network process management in IVEs are outlined in this paper. We show how the developed approach is applied in the automotive industry in the context of the CrossWork IST project. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.