Lifecycle, Workflow and Other Types of Process Management in Aras

MarcL: PLM solution Process Management Workflow functions should work in conjunction with the data Vault and Document Management functionality to provide the ability to define and implement various processes like Enterprise Engineering Change, Part Number Request, Supplier Approval, CAPA / SCAR, etc. based on business rules. Online workflows should be automated in terms of process step advancement, tracking, information distribution, and integrated with a company’s email for alerts and notifications.

Peter Schroer:

The Aras Innovator platform includes 3 primary process automation Web services:  Lifecycle, Workflow and Project.

All three services are integrated with your company’s email systems via SMTP like Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Notes and can send email notifications.  All three of these services are used for the distribution of information, notifications and alerts.

The 3 services differ in how work tasks are distributed to users, and how the scheduling of work is organized.

In Aras Innovator Lifecycle service is comparable to what most commercial PLM systems call “workflow”… it’s about State management,

while our/Aras Workflow service is comparable to an enterprise BPM system (business process manager) and can even be used as a stand-alone BPM system in a corporate SOA based enterprise architecture,  and…

Aras Project service is a stage-gate project scheduling and resource planning web service comparable to Oracle’s Primavera capabilities.

The out-of-the-box Aras solutions have a wide range of predefined processes using these 3 services together for things like change management, program management, etc.

All 3 of these services work with Aras document management and file vaulting capabilities, and our OOTB solutions use them as the basis for everything involving processes.

The Aras Innovator platform includes a graphical solution studio where you can customize and extend these capabilities as well as create entirely new process-based applications that use any combination of Lifecycle, Workflow and Project for your company’s needs.

These 3 process-oriented Web services are integrated hierarchically.   The architectural reason for three services is to simplify the administration of corporate PLM processes by eliminating the compromises and programming required to make a single purpose “workflow” engine fit real-world requirements.

We provide training on how to implement, customize, and optimize the use of these Aras Innovator process capabilities.

Tags: Architecture, business process, customize, document management, email, File Vaulting, framework, Lifecycle, Model-based, notification, platform, project, Vault, Web services, workflow