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Abstract

A system and method for supporting Product Lifecycle Management over a distributed service network topology that connects a hierarchy of functional domains, each domain having a service ontology and one or more service composition schemas defined by the service ontology. Each service composition schema models a business process in its domain. Descriptions of services provided to each domain are published to a service repository by providers of the services, in conformity with one of the service composition schemas. There is a business process proxy provided by the service provider for each service description, which encapsulates for public access the internal processes of the service provider. The invention makes use of an event messaging protocol that enables service collaboration and ad-hoc workflow composition. Each business process is implemented by an ad-hoc workflow comprised of one or more tasks connected by one or more business rules. For each business process there is a business flow manager that dynamically composes ad-hoc workflow prior to execution and dynamically modifies the ad-hoc workflow as the business process executes. The business flow manager uses backward-chain inferencing and then forward-chain inferencing to generate the ad-hoc workflows, based on user identification of a target task. The business flow manager is able to stop execution of the workflow and regenerate a workflow for remaining tasks in response to events received over the network from service providers, and is also able to detect conflicts in the workflows at composition time and at execution time.

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