The Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC) is a nonprofit international standardization organization established in August 1993. It is composed of people in a variety of fields, including workflow vendors, users, consultants and university related parties.

The aim of the WfMC is to promote the use of workflows by defining technical terms about the workflow technology and standardizing the specifications for interconnection among workflow products. Currently, two hundred members from twenty-five countries participate in this organization. The membership is increasing year by year and the WfMC is going to be a major standardization organization in the rapidly changing software market.

In November 1995, the WfMC released standardized specifications for the workflow client application program interface (Interface 2). This allowed users to configure flexible systems.
In November 1996, the organization released specifications for interconnection among heterogeneous workflow systems (Interface 4). A connection demonstration based on the specifications (Interface 4) was performed in Canada (Toronto) in June 1996 and in Holland (Amsterdam) in October 1996.
Early in 1997, the WfMC released specifications for statistics and will standardize specifications for recording performance data from workflow engines.

To learn about the WfMC's activities, visit their Web sites at:

- WfMC Web site (English): http://www.aiim.org/wfmc/
- Japan SIG Web site (Japanese): http://www.wfmc.gr.jp/

The workflow model defined by the WfMC is a "production workflow" that defines processes in advance and then repeatedly applies these processes to work tasks.

Typical examples are materials purchase systems and insurance assessment systems.
Hitachi Groupmax Workflow, an integrated groupware product, is aimed at this market.

Among the standardized specifications defined by the WfMC, we highly regard the Interface 4 specifications for connection among heterogeneous workflow engines. We verified Groupmax Workflow for these specifications by using a prototype. This technology will become important for inter-corporate transactions, such as electronic commerce (EC) and virtual enterprises (VE), in the future.
Groupmax Enterprise Version 5 supports WfMC Interface 4.