Building an Internet-based Workflow System - The Case of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories' Zephyr Project

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories' Zephyr System provides a showcase for the ways in which emerging technologies can help streamline procurement processes and improve the coordination between participants in engineering projects by allowing collaboration in ways that have not been possible before. The project also shows the success of a highly pragmatic approach that was initiated by the end user community, and that intentionally covered standard situations, rather than aiming at also automating the exceptions. By helping push purchasing responsibilities down to the end user, thereby greatly reducing the involvement of the purchasing department in operational activities, it was possible to streamline the process significantly resulting in time savings of up to 90%, major cost reductions, and improved quality. Left with less day-to-day purchasing operations, the purchasing department has more time for strategic tasks such as selecting and pre-qualifying new suppliers, negotiating blanket orders, or implementing new procurement systems. The case shows once more that the use of information technologies can result in major benefits when aligned with organizational adjustments.