Challenges and solutions of document and workflow management in a manufacturing enterprise: a case study

We present an integrated document and workflow management system (DMS/WMS) applied to the core business process "customer-oriented offer processing" of a machine tool company. We emphasize the integrational aspect where the challenge is to integrate various types of electronic documents and formatted data, different existing and innovative application systems. Furthermore, it is necessary to flexibly integrate the business process-related activities into a homogenous workflow while considering the organizational structure. We introduce the concept of an integrated DMS/WMS and a phase model to structure the numerous complex aspects of a running DMS/WMS. Only a completely integrated DMS/WMS allows an efficient control of business processes. We address the problem of controlling the offer processing of our industrial partner company. We present the design of a DMS/WMS prototype which is able to solve the mentioned integrational problems. In addition, we report the performance of this prototype that is already largely implemented as a running system in the environment of our industry partner. We show several key features of this implementation.