Architecture and key technology for business process management

To achieve standard and coherent management at different levels within enterprises, and realize the seamless integration of Business Process Management (BPM) cross enterprises, a new BPM architecture was proposed. After the concept and function of BPM system were presented, the architecture was built on two popular BPM architectures. The architecture focused on the following three aspects: the level of business management, the supply chain management and the product lifecycle management. In this architecture, various business management levels, domains and cross organizations were maintained in a standard manner, and information technology was utilized to fulfill it. Then the key technology to implement the BPM system was discussed, and the BPM technology was compared to the workflow technology, Enterprise application integration (EAI) technology and Enterprise Resource Plan (ERP) technology, concentrating on their differences and relationships. Finally it is concluded that BPM is the development trend of enterprise information system architecture in the next generation.