Resource Planning Systems Research Articles

Exploring the adoption and implementation of discrete and integrated IT systems: a framework for analysis

Despite the substantial organisational benefits of integrated IT, the implementation of such systems – and particularly Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems – has tended to be problematic, stimulating an extensive body of research into ERP implementation. This research has remained largely separate from the main IT implementation literature. At the same time, studies of IT implementation have generally adopted either a factor or process approach; both have major limitations. To address these limitations, factor and process perspectives are combined here in a unique model of IT implementation. We argue that: the organisational factors which determine successful implementation differ for integrated and traditional, discrete IT; failure to manage these differences is a major source of integrated IT failure. The factor/process model is used as a framework for proposing differences between discrete and integrated IT. [Received 31 August 2009; Revised 30 April 2010; Accepted 26 October 2010]

An ontology-based multi-agent virtual enterprise system (OMAVE): part 1: domain modelling and rule management

New advancements in computers and information technologies have yielded novel ideas to create more effective virtual collaboration platforms for multiple enterprises. Virtual enterprise (VE) is a collaboration model between multiple independent business partners in a value chain and is particularly suited to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The most challenging problem in implementing VE systems is ineffcient and inflexible data storage and management techniques for VE systems. In this research, an ontology-based multi-agent virtual enterprise (OMAVE) system is proposed to help SMEs shift from the classical trend of manufacturing part pieces to producing high-value-added, high-tech, innovative products. OMAVE targets improvement in the flexibility of VE business processes in order to enhance integration with available enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. The architecture of OMAVE supports the requisite flexibility and enhances the reusability of the data and knowledge created in a VE system. In this article, a detailed description of system features along with the rule-based reasoning and decision support capabilities of OMAVE system are presented. To test and verify the functionality and operation of this system, a sample product was manufactured using OMAVE applications and tools with the contribution of three SMEs.

Challenges while Updating Planning Parameters of an ERP System and How a Simulation-Based Support System Can Support Material Planners

In an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, production planning is influenced by a variety of parameters. Previous investigations show that setting parameter values is highly relevant to a company’s target system. Parameter settings should be checked and adjusted, e.g., after a change in environmental factors, by material planners. In practice, updating the parameters is difficult due to several reasons. This paper presents a simulation-based decision support system, which helps material planners in all stages of decision-making processes. It will present the system prototype’s user interface and the results of applying the system to a case study.

Empirical Validation Of A Performance-Based Innovation Process Model: A Case Of ERP

ABSTRACTThis study argues that models of the innovation process tacitly assume that outcome benefits will automatically ensue from the innovation. We argue that models of the innovation process should include a final stage: performance outcome. We distil the elements of key existing models of the innovation process into a simplified model that links key elements of the process to the ultimate performance impact. We test our simplified model for validity in the context of the introduction of an information system innovation, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. The data used for the testing were collected through a cross-sectional survey of a number of Australian organizations. The data were analyzed using partial least squares (PLS) to test the validity of the model. Our findings show that key stages in the innovation process, such as the successful adoption of ERP software, have a critical effect on each other and on output performance. In this study, we have empirically shown the commonly assumed positive nature of the relationship between the various stages of the innovation process. This has previously been supported only by common-sense conjecture and individual examples. Managers can use the simple process model we have developed to prioritize their installation and the management of the information system innovations underpinning the stages defined in the model.

Sustainability Cockpit: An integrated tool for continuous assessment and improvement of sustainability in manufacturing

Sustainability assessment needs to be embedded into manufacturers’ daily operations for continuous improvement. Existing factories, especially small and medium enterprises (SMEs), often lack infrastructure and capital to enable such regular assessment. An integrated tool has been developed based on a generic discrete event simulation (DES) factory model, which is linked to the company's resource planning system in order to not only assess the sustainability performance of each company's as-is operations, but also optimise their future performance. An Australian company was used as a case study to demonstrate the validity of the tool.

Strategies for leading IT-enabled change: lessons from a global transformation case

Purpose – The aim of this article is to provide strategic insights of how multinational organizations lead IT-enabled change on a global scale. The article summarizes the findings from a three-year case study of the international telecom company Ericsson. This company managed to successfully transform their finance and accounting (F & A) unit from a highly decentralized structure into a so-called shared service center (SSC) structure and the whole change was enabled by enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. Design/methodology/approach – The case study data consists of in-depth interviews, archival data, and observations collected during three years. Findings – The article provides rich description of how the transformation was executed together with three key strategic lessons. Originality/value – The article offers unique and novel insights of how strategist drives IT-enabled change on a global scale.

Assessing Partnership Alternatives in an IT Network Employing Analytical Methods

One of the main critical success factors for the companies is their ability to build and maintain an effective collaborative network. This is more critical in the IT industry where the development of sustainable competitive advantage requires an integration of various resources, platforms, and capabilities provided by various actors. Employing such a collaborative network will dramatically change the operations management and promote flexibility and agility. Despite its importance, there is a lack of an analytical tool on collaborative network building process. In this paper, we propose an optimization model employing AHP and multiobjective programming for collaborative network building process based on two interorganizational relationships’ theories, namely, (i) transaction cost theory and (ii) resource-based view, which are representative of short-term and long-term considerations. The five different methods were employed to solve the formulation and their performances were compared. The model is implemented in an IT company who was in process of developing a large-scale enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. The results show that the collaborative network formed through this selection process was more efficient in terms of cost, time, and development speed. The framework offers novel theoretical underpinning and analytical solutions and can be used as an effective tool in selecting network alternatives.

Is Closed Communication a Major Hindrance in an Enterprise Resource Planning Implementation? A Case Study of an Indonesian Family-Owned Company

The high risk of failure associated with the implementation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) system relates to resistance among employees by rejecting or sabotaging the system. Communication has been identified as a critical success factor on ERP implementation in several studies, whereas, many others do not depict any relation at all. The current study, however, argues that communication regarding the benefits of ERP system is the most critical success factor for the accomplishment of ERP implementation in family-owned company in Indonesia. Empirical data from 116 ERP users were examined by using logistic regression, which reveals that communication has significant negative effect on ERP implementation. It means the more company practices closed communication, the lesser success of ERP implementation will be achieved. Findings show that closed communication leads to poor coordination between departments which reduces the speed of problem solving in the field and causes ERP implementation in PT ABC to not be fully utilized.

Delineation of River Basin Committees in Peru using WARPLAM DSS

In order to promote good water governance practices, harmonize multiple objectives, and reflect the linkages between environmental, socioeconomic and politico-administrative aspects, it is imperative to define appropriate regions for water resources planning and management. The Water Resources Planning and Management Decision Support System (WARPLAM DSS) is presented here as a tool to support the definition of suitable limits for water resources regions. Although river basins are generally considered the most suitable regions to achieve Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) goals, WARPLAM DSS facilitates the analysis of politico-administrative, historic-cultural, socioeconomic, and physical-environmental aspects. This paper summarizes an initiative to define integrated water resources regions for the establishment of River Basin Committees (RBCs) in Peru, based on a comprehensive analysis of the Peruvian territory. The study was developed through a partnership between ANA-Peru and ANA-Brazil, with the cooperation of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). The results simulated in this attempt anticipate a more harmonized division of Peru's territory into water resources regions. Such an approach aims to establish more robust RBCs and to increase the chances of attaining IWRM goals.

Value Additive Activities in ERP Projects: A Consultant's View

Resource Planning system in present days has become mandatory Enterprise solution software mostly for large and medium scale industries. There are involvement of Project managers, Business users, super users, top management from the business, vendors and many other stake holders. As the enterprise system is a complex one to implement, each and every stakeholder are equally important in the project. A consultant from functional and technical side of ERP product has a bigger role to play in any of such projects. It is imperative that a consultant plays a major role in the ERP project in order to make the project a real success to the business. Consultants are like a catalyst in the project that plays the most important role to smoothen the work flow of a project in order to complete it successfully; however, at the end of the project they remain unchanged or unmoved, although they become richer in knowledge and experience. This study explores the role of consultants in ERP project life cycle and its importance. KeywordsEnterprise Systems, Consultant, SME, LE, Value.

Identification of approximately duplicate material records in ERP systems

ABSTRACTThe quality of master data is crucial for the accurate functioning of the various modules of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. This study addresses specific data problems arising from the generation of approximately duplicate material records in ERP databases. Such problems are mainly due to the firm’s lack of unique and global identifiers for the material records, and to the arbitrary assignment of alternative names for the same material by various users. Traditional duplicate detection methods are ineffective in identifying such approximately duplicate material records because these methods typically rely on string comparisons of each field. To address this problem, a machine learning-based framework is developed to recognise semantic similarity between strings and to further identify and reunify approximately duplicate material records – a process referred to as de-duplication in this article. First, the keywords of the material records are extracted to form vectors of discriminating words. Second, a machine learning method using a probabilistic neural network is applied to determine the semantic similarity between these material records. The approach was evaluated using data from a real case study. The test results indicate that the proposed method outperforms traditional algorithms in identifying approximately duplicate material records.

Taxonomy of ERP integrations and performance outcomes: an exploratory study of manufacturing firms

Building and deploying network capabilities of firms are crucial for sustaining competitive advantage. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are useful to enhance such network capabilities thorough effective information flows. Their intended goals are measured in terms of production costs, operational flexibility and supply chain performance outcomes. However, the impact of ERP system implementation on firm performance has been reported as somewhat inconclusive. This study contends that a missing link in the story is the scope and extent of ERP system implementation after investigating how the extent of ERP integration is associated with the performance outcomes of manufacturing firms. The study also posits that restructuring in the organisation and supply chains are positively associated with manufacturing performance. Since ERP often entails restructuring in an organisation and supply chains, it is anticipated that restructuring plays an important role in inducing positive impact of ERP implementation to the firm. Using a global sample of 641 manufacturers, this research identifies four distinct ERP systems integration patterns, epitomised by different extents and directions of integration, and finds a significant association among the broadest degree of ERP systems integration, restructuring and plant performance improvement. The empirical results also show that restructuring takes place most actively in a firm that implement ERP with widest scope and scale.

Optimising composite PMMA/PVC profile cooled calibrator

Thermal polymethylmethacrylate/polyvinylchloride surface composite co-extrusion profile (referred to as composite profile for short in the following part) was cooled and calibrated through calibrator. Calibrator cooling was completed by its internal flow of water. As a result, the design of the calibrator cooling channel structure was an important foundation for guaranteeing the molding quality of the material. According to the target function, preliminary design was conducted for cooling channel structure of the calibrator. Atypia design optimisation was carried out for local cooling channel structure around the composite profile by numerical simulation using analysis software. The result suggests the following: the cooling effect has been increased; on the basis of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system and Computer Aided Design/Computer Aided Engineering (CAD/CAE) network system expert database of concurrent engineering, it is further optimised to design the cooling channel structure of calibrator. The optimisation focuses on composite profile, structure, size and performance of the extrusive composite.

Assembly FG: An Education Case Study Using QuickBooks as the AIS for a Small Manufacturing Business

ABSTRACT This education case is the first to use QuickBooks Premier Accountant to teach students foundation functionalities common to all Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems that support discrete manufacturing. Students learn how to configure QuickBooks so that direct materials, direct labor and applied manufacturing overhead costs charged to work-in-process parts manufactured at lower levels of the BOM are rolled up into the costs of higher-level work-in-process parts and, ultimately, into the costs of the finished goods parts. Students set up raw materials, work-in-process and finished goods part numbers so that quantities and costs of parts on-hand are tracked in inventory on the Perpetual Inventory System to provide an inventory subsidiary ledger that continuously matches the manufacturing inventory account balances in the Chart of Accounts. Students learn the importance of configuring Off the Shelf (OTS) manufacturing systems in accurately costing manufactured discrete products, including setting up manufacturing accounts, employees, part numbers, and the BOM. As such, the case is designed to be used in Accounting Information Systems (AIS) courses that are already using QuickBooks to help students' better understand the general concepts covered in AIS textbooks on the Production Cycle that are not addressed in extant textbooks on QuickBooks.

Support structures and their impacts on employee outcomes

Despite the impressive progress in understanding the benefits and challenges related to enterprise system (ES) implementations--such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems--little is known a...

Enabling Support of Collaborative Cross-enterprise Business Processes for Legacy ERP Systems.

In order to create innovative business products, share knowledge between people and businesses, or increase the control and quality of services, more and more often enterprise business processes involve in collaborations by delegating or providing some pieces of work to other enterprises. Necessity to cooperate in the cross-enterprise setting leads to Collaborative Business Processes (CBPs). The difference between CBPs and Business Processes (BPs) is in the decentralized coordination, flexible backward recovery, participants notification about the state, efficient adaptability to changes, presence of multiple information systems, and individual authorization settings. In the paper we consider a specific case of CBPs where multiple collaborating partners use Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system of the same vendor. The vendor can see (e.g., monitor) the changes of data elements, but does not have explicit process awareness in the ERP system to support flow of activities in the cross-enterprise setting. The paper also discusses different settings of cross-enterprise CBP and shows simplified enterprise models behind the vendor possibilities to positively impact collaborative processes. The restrictions of the vendor are implicit information flows in BP, diversity of ERP integrations with third party Information Systems (IS), the lack of mechanisms for monitoring BP instances, backward recovery, user notification about the current state and tasks, and inability to make explicit changes in customers’ ISs.

Investigating ERP Misalignment between ERP Systems and Implementing Organizations in Developing Countries

The adoption of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems by organizations from developing countries has increased dramatically. The continued growth of ERP adoption in developing countries is accompanied by high failure rates which makes it impossible for these organizations to enjoy the full realization of benefits. Many ERP systems’ failures are associated with the misalignment between the ERP requirements and the expectations of the client. 70 percent of ERP implementations fail to deliver the anticipated benefits with estimates that developing countries make up some 10 to 15 percent of global ERP sales (Hawari & Heeks, 2010). ERP systems do not usually fit the requirements of the implementing organizations in developing countries because of the different business practices, and legal and government regulations. There is a sizeable gap between the assumptions and requirements built into the designs of ERP systems and the realities of the client. Until academics, organizations, vendors and consultants understand better the phenomenon of misfit, the realization of benefits from ERP systems is likely to remain difficult and unpredictable on practical perspective. This paper seeks to investigate the complexities inherent in the ERP systems, which subsequently result in misalignment and this will equip decision makers to better prepare strategies that will increase the probability of realizing the desired results. This paper will contribute directly or indirectly to the reduction of failure rate of ERP projects on developing countries associated with misfit.

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The use of simulation games have been a popular means of teaching business and marketing content for numerous years. As more and more software is being utilized to conduct business, some of those companies have developed simulation games to help teach and train students and employees on how to utilize the software. SAP is one such company that has created an ERPsim simulation game to familiarize existing and future employees with SAP’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. The paper covers the assessment of the student’s experience of playing an ERPsim game in marketing classes. Students indicated ERPsim should ontinue to be used in marketing classes while noting several suggestions and recommendations for making business software usage in marketing classes more relevant to the marketing discipline.

Enhancing ERP to Fit the Business Needs: A Customization Method Selection

Enterprise resource planning and management (ERP) systems is now dominated by systems that are perceivedexpensive and inflexible. In order to take full advantage of the ERP systems, implementations require drasticstructural and cultural changes within the organization including business process reengineering. These changescertainly allowed to do but somewhat difficult to accomplish and organizations continue to struggle with changemanagement of ERP systems. Finding the right fit between ERP systems and the business processes is critical forsuccessful ERP implementation [12]. In this case, the organization can respond by two approaches: ERP systemcustomization or organizational adaptation [6][15]. However, there is also best of breed systems, which are bestapplied to one or a few functions, facilitating system maintenance. This research proposes a comprehensive ERPsystem customization selection framework in which the objective hierarchy is constructed and the appropriatecriterias are specified to provide detailed guidance for the customization. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP)method [27] is applied for dealing with the ambiguities involved in the assessment of customization alternativesand relative importance weightings of criterias.