Workflow mode description-Process Control Mode (7) -- Structured synchronizing merge

1. Theoretical Model

This mode is used to cope with the branches produced by multi-choice or-split.

　　

First, the merging of this branch requires understanding the context relationship. If only branch a is generated before, only branch a can trigger the rear body, and branch B is also used. If branch a and branch B are concurrent, pay attention to the word "synchronizing" in the title. The merge must wait until branch a and branch B are completed before triggering the rear C.

By the way, this word "structured" is often seen in subsequent workflow modes. This word indicates a taste of conditional judgment. The mode itself cannot determine the merging mode independently. It must adapt to different situations based on context information (for example: this mode requires you to know how the previous or-split node branches to determine the merge mode ).

2. Application

In a general design, this pattern is usually paired with multi-choice. For example:

　　

This mode is difficult to implement in the early workflow engine. Generally, the secondary developers can write code to achieve context-related effects. However, fortunately, both BPEL and xdpl can directly support this mode, and the current secondary developers are still quite happy.

In general practice, this situation is very common. If there is no information support, it is also the most efficient and costly. There is a department/personnel who has to go through a very painful information collection process to determine the status of the aforementioned processes. When there is a branch process, it is more troublesome, and the financial personnel have a deep understanding: When checking different document creden (such as the purchase orders of the sales department and the receipt orders of the warehouse ), it may even be necessary to have a deep understanding of the suspended delivery of goods (which has an impact on the financial statement of the month), the quality of goods, the number of returned goods, and so on. Assume that a purchase process may produce two concurrent branches: Receiving and returning. The two parts may occur simultaneously or only one of them may occur, however, if the finance department needs to know the information in the subsequent process, consider the following design:

　　

Pay attention to the business changes of this design. Different Combinations produce different actual services. For example, all items are received, all items are returned, and some items are returned in this first-class process. The figure simplifies a lot of business situations. For example, the return process may be handed over to the QC Department for further testing (generally, a manufacturing company will have a dedicated QA department in charge of the business of purchasing parts ), in other cases, the warehouse receiving process is adopted. All in all, if there is no information-based support, a financial personnel may need to know some information about the receipt process before they can check various accounting creden.

Another situation I have encountered is the process of calculating the pieces of workers in some small commodity production lines. in finance, we need to check the output of each worker to pay wages. In this case, if there is no information-based support, A considerable number of people may be required to participate in this piece counting process. I think the most typical thing is that textile enterprises with 200 workers use about 15 people to calculate the output. These workers need to work overtime every day. There are many temporary workers in the factory, and three or four yuan of salary is required each month (many temporary workers are paid once a week). As a result, it is only a piece of work, and the cost is very high.

3. A bit of thinking

Based on actual experience, if the information technology is adopted, the cost of this business process can be greatly reduced. As mentioned above, financial personnel do not need to go deep into the business of other departments, but can directly obtain various information through the information terminal, which saves a lot of time.

There is also a process reform, which is more thorough. If such a process exists, try to share the merged work with each branch, and the merged business will be much simpler, other jobs are more efficient because they share their respective branch processes. This will be discussed in detail later (the relationship between workflow technology and process reengineering will be introduced in some articles later ).