Modeling extended manufacturing processes with service-oriented entities

The architectural style of next generation technological platforms intended to support design, deployment, and execution of extended business processes inside organizational networks, must be guided by interoperability principles at the processes, services, or data level. Service-oriented architectures, these being design patterns, and not merely technology, attempt to address these issues. Yet we believe that some of their underlying concepts (i.e., service providers, interfaces, and instances) must still be included at the business models level. This study attempts to show that how by introducing the Abstract and Concrete Service Entities concept at the extended business process models level, it could be possible to address most of the current interoperability issues inside a manufacturing network.