Object-Oriented Workflow Management: Intelligence, flexibility, and real support for business processes

This paper describes our experiences from combining workflow management with object technology and expert systems technology. This approach constitutes a powerful integration of business processes, business objects and knowledge bases applicable to a wide range of problem domains. Our experiences with applying this combination in several real world systems show that it can add a new level of support for business processes to the field of workflow management. We also describe how intelligent agents can be used in this context for knowledge management in a large and complex environment. OO Workflow: Intelligence, flexibility, and real support for business processes Page: 2 of 12 1. Introduction Since its foundation in 1985 (as Computas Expert Systems, or "CX" among friends), Computas has been guided by a motivation to help individuals and organisations apply knowledge more efficiently and wisely through the use of technology. The means to achieve this has been to exploit and combine t..