Business protocol adaptation for flexible chain management

Abstract

Nowadays, organizations collaborate in business chains using dynamic service outsourcing to deliver complex products and services. To enable the flexible formation of business chains, organizations need to ensure that their business protocols are compatible. If the business protocols are incompatible, then the organizations cannot form a business chain. Protocol adaptors can resolve incompatibilities between business protocols during chain formation. By using the customer order decoupling point, we identify three different business chain structures. For each chain structure, we identify how adaptation can be used to support flexible chain formation. © Springer-Verlag 2010.