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Subject: TinyERP (an Open Source ERP project) and ebBP?
Hi ebBP Group Monica keeps :) reminding me to report about the TinyERP and its workflow support. OK here some notes. ebBP and UBL considerations at the end. Background: ----------- Well TinyERP [1] is an Open Source ERP system implemented in Pyhton and hence platform independent. It currently uses the PostgreSQL database which is also Open Source [2]. TinyERP reached version 4.0. 4 to 5 development years have passed. This version was announced and "free" TinyERP discovery days were announced. Discovery Day: -------------- At the discovery day we looked at the various modules of TinyERP. The Production module seems very advanced. A walk through of the system was done. Later at home I toyed with TinyERP and could do the following tasks: o create product categories o create products (also set whether they are built for order or for stock) o create bill of materials (product A is composed of two product B's and one product C). o create routings for the production (to produce product X it requires one resource of machine A for 10 minutes including 2 minutes pre-configuration time and 2 minutes post-configuration times, it requires 1 hour of resource "Joe" to do the work and each with costs per minute/hour) o set order points and suppliers for items that are bought and not produced then -> o create an Sales Order (*) o select customer o select products eg 4 items of product A o select the way of invoicing (eg one option is to start production immediate or produce invoice and wait until invoice is paid before production is started) o then the production must be kicked-started. o it checks the inventory to see what is available and what must be orderd. o then purchase orders are created (*) o then invoices arrive from the suppliers (*) o the invoices must be entered into the system (*) o then the received goods must be moved to the inventory o once every required item arrived then the production can be started o once the production finished the items are added to the inventory o once the inventory has the required levels the initial purchase order is full filled o then an invoice for the customer is created (*) o when the bank sheet shows the paid amount of the customer it can be reconciled (*) -> everything is recorded in the accounting in the background (activa passiva, cost and revenue) The system is setup in such a way that indeed different roles can work with the product (eg the sales person, the inventory person, the production person, the purchase person etc.) (*) electronic B2B opportunities needless to say that I was very impressed! TinyERP is GNU General Public License (GPL). Workflows: ---------- The system uses workflows. The workflows define the activities (eg if a sales order is created the next step is to confirm the sales order or if a sales order is created and its value is less then 100 Euros then autoconfirm the sales order). The workflows are a TinyERP workflows so not a Standardisation Body based Workflow Standard or anything the like. Attached a sample workflow. Apparently one student provided a script/tool to convert a XPDL workflow into the TinyERP workflow descriptions. See http://tinyforge.org/projects/convertworkflow/ I have not further looked at the workflows. The technical framework seems to be very flexible. Good and not so good: --------------------- o Accounting, production, creditors, debitors etc seem to be very well done. o Customer/Supplier Relation Ship management is currently limited to some kind of Ticket management (Customer X has a problem with Y ... who deals with it ... what was said etc) (maybe you could use an alternative Open Source solution for CRM [5]) o Project Management for a Services company seems to be still a bit small. o Human Resource is not yet used for payroll (maybe you could use an alternative for HR [4] ) -> but because TinyERP is GPL licensed and hence everyone if free to extend it and further distribute it it is only a matter of time until someone will take parts that are not yet so much developed and bring them to the next level. General Open Source for Business Applications --------------------------------------------- I see a trend in Open Source business solutions: It seems that Open Source Business solutions are like closed source commercial business solutions 1520+ ? years ago. Some islands solutions. There are Open Source Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) available (see [6], [7], [8], [9]) so ... time for integration for Open Source Business Applications. And this time maybe only once because the interfaces are free, too ... and no need to integrate (and make money) for every customer independently. ebXML in general, ebBP and UBL in particular -------------------------------------------- So the asterisks (*) [3] in the Discovery Day lists indicate where a TinyERP could interact with a trading partner directly via ebXML for example and produce and consume business documents, such as UBL documents. So someone could write a library to import and export UBL business documents for TinyERP ;) Then someone could make sure an Open Source ebXML messaging system (hopefully with CPA support) can be connected to TinyERP (directly with some glue or via some Open Source ESB). Because TinyERP is Free Software [10] we, the people who are not working for an ERP company, still have a strong product/project where we can explore the use of ebXML Business Processes. This comes to the question: What to do with ebXML Business Processes once they are modelled? 1 use them as documentation and communication medium with trading partners 2 use them to generate ebXML Collaboration Protocol Agreements (CPA's). 3 use them to monitor the B2B collaborations. 4 use them to combine them to monitor the internal private business processes and the B2B collaborations. 5 others? eg provide Business Intelligence about your trading partner relationships (eg which trading partners are the ones that send me the purchase order confirmation within 5 minutes (I like those partners very much) ... or which are the bad eggs -> which partners send a purchase order confirmation later than 2 days, how often, how long on average takes it a trading partner sends a purchase order confirmation... take the same partners the same time with paying the invoice? ;) ----> probably based on individual business transactions activities within the ebBP definitions, eg show me all information about the business transaction activities ABC of ebBP definition X ? Someone could write 3, 4, and 5 and use TinyERP as a testbed. Question: o If you use a system like TinyERP and from your large customer you get some ebXML Business Process definitions how would you think your systems could make use of them? o how could ebBP definitions be integrated into a system like TinyERP? o Are they integrated with the workflows of the TinyERP system? o Must they be integrated at all or are ebBP definitions used outside of a TinyEPR system? Best regards Sacha [1] www.tinyerp.org [2] Big advantage over Compiere ( http://www.compiere.org another Open Source ERP system) that still is bound to an Oracle Database. There are no-software-licence-costs Oracle databases available but with constraints (eg I heard a maximum data storage capacity and a maximum possible amount of RAM of the server of the machine, also I heard there is only one connection at any time allowed to a no-software-licence-costs Oracle AND most importantly the database as such is not free (not allowed to view the source, edit the source, modify and distribute). [3] By the way there is a full blown Open Source telephone system called Asterisk http://www.asterisk.org [4] http://www.orangehrm.com/home/ [5] http://www.vtiger.org [6] http://www.xmlblaster.com/ [7] http://www.mulesource.org [8] https://open-esb.dev.java.net/ [9] http://www.servicemix.org/site/home.html [9] http://www.fsf.org
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