Manufacturing companies are purchasing materials for primary production processes on the one hand, as well as goods for their supporting (e.g. administrative) processes. The amounts involved with these goods are substantial, so that guidelines and procedures are developed to control the purchasing process. These guidelines can include validation of proposed suppliers, verification of product specifications, approval for the budget and so on.
Many companies are processing these purchase requisitions by using the ‘pencil-and-paper’ approach. This approach is relatively simple to implement, however with some severe disadvantages, such as:
Since the purchase requisition process involves routine steps, part of the process can be taken over by a computer system, in this case a workflow engine. Routing a purchase requisition throughout the company for the necessary approval is mainly a matter of following the guidelines and formal approval rules, which can be modeled very well.
Replacing the paper purchase requisition form by an electronic form not only prevents loss of such a form, it also is shipped faster and safer to another person (that might be at another location). Above all, shipping electronic documents is free of charge.
Since the workflow engine is controlling the executed tasks for each and every purchase requisition, easy status- and history-tracking of a specific requisition is another advantage.