Understanding Workflow Management
Workflow management offers a powerful means of automating various components of the work order life cycle across the entire enterprise. Based on a set of procedural rules and triggering events, documents, information, and tasks pass efficiently from one participant to another for action, and minimal user involvement is required. For example, you can use a workflow process to:
Route a work order for approval.
Commit inventory to a work order.
Run the capacity plan for a work order.
Send messages to appropriate people regarding the progress of a work order.
In addition, the system enables you to:
Define any number of workflow processes, depending on business needs.
Attach any workflow process to any given event within an application.
Execute conditional processing, which is logic that depends on supplied criteria, such as currency amount, status, and priority.
A workflow process contains activities and related subprocesses that are specific to a particular function that you want to automate. The Work Orders system includes predefined workflow processes that are specific to the work order life cycle. You can modify or add to these processes, if necessary. Typically, you need to customize workflow processes to meet the needs of the organization. An example of a predefined process for Work Orders is the process for work order approval.