TinyERP (an Open Source ERP project) and ebBP?

[Sacha Schlegel <sacha@schlegel.li>]

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

sale_workflow.xml