Workflow automation

A workflow consists of an orchestrated and repeatable pattern of business activity enabled by the systematic organization of resources into processes that transform materials, provide services, or process information. It can be depicted as a sequence of operations, declared as work of a person or group, an organization of staff, or one or more simple or complex mechanisms.

From a more abstract or higher-level perspective, workflow may be considered a view or representation of real work. The flow being described may refer to a document, service or product that is being transferred from one step to another.

Workflows may be viewed as one fundamental building block to be combined with other parts of an organization's structure such as information technology, teams, projects and hierarchies.

The development of the concept of workflow occurred above a series of loosely defined, overlapping eras.

The modern history of workflows can be traced to Frederick Taylor and Henry Gantt, although the term 'workflow' was not in usage as such during their lifetimes. One of the earliest usages of the term 'work flow' was in a railway engineering journal from 1921.

Taylor and Gantt launched the study of the deliberate, rational organization of work, primarily in the context of manufacturing. This gave rise to time and motion studies. Related concepts include job shops and queuing systems (Markov chains).

The 1948 book Cheaper by the Dozen introduced the emerging concepts to the context of family life.

The invention of the typewriter and the copier helped spread the study of the rational organization of labor from the manufacturing shop floor to the office. Filing systems and other sophisticated systems for managing physical information flows evolved. Two events provided a huge impetus to the development of formalized information workflows. First, the field of optimization theory matured and developed mathematical optimization techniques. Second, World War II and the Apollo program were unprecedented in their demands for the rational organization of work.

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