This project is concerned with the procurement process and associated interorganizational processes. The basic hypothesis is that federated workflow systems integrated in an electronic marketplace offer the best foundation for the support of interorganizational processes, provided that a careful business process redesign (BPR) is carried out first.

This requires specific instruments based on existing BPR techniques. The following factors must be taken into account:

• the end-user's business reality and goals
• the interorganizational dimension of the process
• new features offered by interorganizational workflow systems that affect the structure of existing processes.

The aim of research in the area of interorganizational workflow is to support the automation of business-to-business operations. The present project develops techniques for interorganizational workflow management, i.e. the specification and execution of global workflows in a federation formed by a collection of autonomous workflow systems.

The specification of global workflow allows the "import" of workflows of other parties in the federation. It relies on a trader that maintains information about workflows offered or provided by the parties of the federation.

A second objective focusses on interorganizational workflow execution. A particular aim is to develop the necessary middleware required to establish interoperability between the workflow systems of the parties in a federation so that the systems do not have to be extended.

A. Geppert, M. Kradolfer, and D. Tombros.
Market-Based Workflow Management.
Int'l Journal on Cooperative Information Systems (IJCIS), 7(4):297-314, 1998.

A. Geppert, M. Kradolfer, and D. Tombros.
Issues on Workflow Specification and Execution.
In 1st European Workshop on Workflow and Process Management (WPM '98), Zurich, Switzerland, October 1998.