Orchestrating supply chain interactions using emerging process description languages and business rules

Business processes are significant assets to an organization; they are the fundamental ways in which it achieves its goals. To respond to changes in today's fast moving environment, companies need software that will enable them to restructure their processes to align with business objectives. Business Process Management (BPM) allows companies to manage process lifecycles. To sustain competitive advantage in today's fast moving economy, companies need corporate visibility. With a Business Process Management System (BPMS), key individuals will be able to see into the heart of their company's operations, tweaking processes when necessary. In the context of supply chains, companies can monitor their contributions to a more global process. A BPMS utilizes the technology infrastructures currently available to create and deploy processes throughout the enterprise and leverages data, process, and integration standards to ensure interoperability. Rules and rule engines are becoming increasingly important to BPMS software. The business rule approach decouples business logic encoded as business rules from the applications in an organization. A flexible rule-based system allows companies change rules quickly to keep in tune with changing business policies. XESS is an XML based Expert System Shell that creates and downloads rules to XESS Inference Engines deployed throughout a business scenario. It is a flexible, intelligent middleware built using open standards and Java technologies.