One of the core components of Z PLM is a Workflow Engine. Many of the processes (engineering change order, manufacturing process change, corrective action and others are based on Workflow Management capability of Z PLM.
Administrators in Z Flow can use Process Designer to create workflow templates. We will come to process templates shortly in the next section. Users with appropriate authorizations can use process templates to create workflow instances.
For example, if the company has a defined process for corrective action requests, process template designer can be used to create a process template for corrective action request. Once the appropriate process template for corrective action request is designed and made effective, users can use the template to create corrective action requests (instances of the corrective action request process template).
Process Templates
Process template is the blueprint for how the process should be executed within the organization. A process template is made up of workflow activities that need to be completed. Workflow activities can be completed by people or they can be automated system activities. The following picture shows a high-level overview of a process template.
A process template, which is a blueprint of how the process should be executed and by whom, is made up of the following
- Process information, includes attributes, parts, files and structured forms
- Roles users that should complete workflow activities
- Users that are part of the workflow and taking on different workflow roles
- Different workflow activities (data preparation, review, approval, systems integration activities, etc. that make up the workflow
List of process templates are shown below.
Process instances
Process instances are actual processes that are executed based on a workflow template. In the example shown below, a corrective action request instance is created based on a Corrective Action Request process template.
