Inter-business process automation is the next phase of lean thinking

Oracle business development manager Ed Stubbs says: “The onset of standards like XML-based EDI, bringing EDI back in-house and making it cheap to maintain, are accelerating adoption.” Stubbs points out that such interactions are much easier than in the past, and adds that BPEL (business process execution language) takes them to the next level, with processes between companies effectively plug-and-play – well almost. “Companies need to be thinking about adoption of these standards,” urges Stubbs. “But they need an element of modernity in their infrastructure. More recent versions [of ERP systems] will be BPEL-compliant and it is being adopted industry-wide.” He cites the Jaguar Land Rover work around BPEL with Warwick Manufacturing Group –aimed at integrating with its supplier network around quality and procedures at the inter-business process level, as well as covering notifications and acknowledgements. “We’ve been running a pilot to completely web enable that. If things in the queue take too long, for example, there are actions and alerts… They’re considering a roll-out now. They’ve done it with six of their top suppliers. “Access to the process is just through a portal. People plug information into their browser screens and that gets back to Jaguar Land Rover.” In this case, business activity monitoring (BAM) sits on top of the processes, keeping tabs on operations. “In effect, paper trails processes have been transformed into very lean electronic automated systems,” says Stubbs. “This is the next evolution of operational excellence and lean. It’s going to snowball.”