Subject-oriented Supply Chain Design and Execution

Supply chains are an integral part of today’s global market place. As such, supply chains are considered integrated systems that synchronize series of business processes in order to create customer value. A vital ingredient of supply chains is the flow of information. Timely, relevant and accurate information exchange between supply chain partners is key for implementing succesfull supply chains. In this context, organisations increasingly rely on IT to improve supply chain processes, e.g. in terms of higher effiviency, timely delivery, or supply chain transparancy. Recent studies investigate the relationship between supply chain collaboration and Business Process Management (BPM). These studies reveal that BPM supports inter-organizational supply chain activities regarding information sharing and communication, joint activities, sharing common goals, and sharing costs, risks and benefits. Furthermore, BPM may improve intra-organizational supply chains, e.g. through people involvement, process-orientation and continuous improvement, or IT-support. This contribution discusses the emerging concept of Subject-oriented Business Process Management (S-BPM) and its capabilities regarding supply chain design and execution support. S-BPM represents a generic approach towards modeling, executing and improving business processes. Thereby, S-BPM puts emphasis on process actors (i.e., subjects), their interaction, and their internal behavior. S-BPM has been applied in various projects, reaching from traditional BPM projects to research projects targeting Industry 4.0 developments. In the context of Industry 4.0, S-BPM has been investigated as enabler for process integration among different levels of control in the production industry - from ERP Systems to Manufacturing Execution Systems to Supervisory Control Systems. Additionally, the horizontal integration across different system participants, for example suppliers and production companies, has been considered. Thereby, S-BPM acts as middleware exhibiting the communication model between different system participants. Aside to enabling technological support, S-BPM may serve to represent and automate work practices in a bottom-up manner. The involvement of domain experts and users is vital when empowering people to become active workplace re-designers and tailoring solutions to dedicated workplace requirements.