An Agent Enhanced Framework to Support Pre-dispatching of Tasks in Workflow Management Systems

In a traditional workflow management system, it's usually assumed that: 1) a task can start to execute if and only if all the pre-conditions of that task are satisfied (such as all information it requires are prepared well); 2) a data object of a task can be released if and only if that task is completed. In practice, these assumptions are strict to some extent. It's shown from the example in this paper that even partial pre-conditions of a task is satisfied, that task can be started to work. Thus overlapping execution of tasks can be achieved. Aiming at this goal, this paper introduces first the concept of task pre-dispatching into WfMS and then presents a multi-agent enhanced WfMS framework to support it. A formalized workflow model, which can support the idea, and some implementation considerations are analyzed, too. With this approach, the duration of a process can be shortened. Even in the worst case, i.e., the overlapping of execution cannot be achieved, the pre-dispatching mechanism can still act as a messenger to inform actors when some tasks will arrive.