RFID together with multi-agent systems to control global value chains

Nowadays, the cooperative intelligent transport systems are part of a largest system. Transportations are modal operations integrated in logistics and, logistics is the main process of the supply chain management. The supply chain strategic management as a simultaneous local and global value chain is a collaborative/cooperative organization of stakeholders, many times in co-opetition, to perform a service to the customers respecting the time, place, price and quality levels. The transportation, like other logistics operations must add value, which is achieved in this case through compression lead times and order fulfillments. The complex supplier's network and the distribution channels must be efficient and the integral visibility (monitoring and tracing) of supply chain is a significant source of competitive advantage. Nowadays, the competition is not discussed between companies but among supply chains. This paper aims to evidence the current and emerging manufacturing and logistics system challenges as a new field of opportunities for the automation and control systems research community. Furthermore, the paper forecasts the use of radio frequency identification (RFID) technologies integrated into an information and communication technologies (ICT) framework based on distributed artificial intelligence (DAI) supported by a multi-agent system (MAS), as the most value advantage of supply chain management (SCM) in a cooperative intelligent logistics systems. Logistical platforms (production or distribution) as nodes of added value of supplying and distribution networks are proposed as critical points of the visibility of the inventory, where these technological needs are more evident.     

A structural equation model for analyzing the impact of ERP on SCM

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) and supply chain management (SCM) represent important information technology investment options for operation or IT managers, and have been acclaimed in the practitioner and academic literature for their potential to improve business performance. The purpose of this article is to provide further insights into the adoption of ERP systems and the impacts on firm competence in SCM. We propose a model featuring ERP benefits to firm competences in supply chain management. We also hypothesize that three constructs of ERP benefits positively impact firm competences in SCM. To clarify the relationships among these constructs, structural equation model (SEM) is conducted to examine the model fit and nine hypotheses. The SEM results clearly demonstrate that there exist close interrelations among the benefits of implementing ERP systems and firm competences in SCM. The data from Taiwanese IT firms was collected through interviewing of experts and surveys. The results provide empirical evidence that the beneficial impacts of ERP on the supply chain do lead to better overall SCM competence. That evidence confirms that operational benefits, business process and management benefits, and strategic IT planning benefits of ERP in turn enhance firm competences of SCM in operational process integration, customer and relationship integration, and planning and control process integration.     

Ensuring Erp Implementation Success

MOST FIRMS OF ANY SIGNIFIcant size are in some stage of implementing enterprise resources planning (ERP) systems or other similar multifunctional enterprise systems. Some are in the early stages of the process, giving consideration to the very substantial implementation costs, perhaps ten times the cost of the system itself. Others have successfully implemented ERP and are tying these systems in with supply-chain management (SCM) and customer relationship management (CRM) systems to have “end-to-end” integrated systems.     

基于ERP的电力物资平衡利库系统

为贯彻电力物资精益化管理要求,加快构建储备合理、周转高效的物资仓储管理体系,实现物资需求计划与现有库存物资的有效匹配,不断提高仓储管理水平,提升库存资源利用效率,提出基于ERP实现电力物资平衡利库系统。通过介绍平衡利库的业务理念、应用策略,以及基于ERP对平衡利库系统的最终实现,为提升物资精益化管理水平打下坚实的基础。     

支持中小企业动态联盟的企业资源计划体系

在讨论ERP系统与应用企业的匹配性、中小企业动态联盟的特点及其ERP系统特征的基础上，提出一个基于盟主企业和盟员企业两大层面的ERP结构体系，并阐述了中小企业动态联盟在所设计的ERP环境下协同工作的业务流程．     

An agent-based approach for e-manufacturing and supply chain integration

A major problem facing manufacturing organisations is how to provide efficient and cost-effective responses to the unpredictable changes taking place in a global market. This problem is made difficult by the complexity of supply chain networks coupled with the complexity of individual manufacturing systems within supply chains. Current systems such as manufacturing execution systems (MES), supply chain management (SCM) systems and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems do not provide adequate facilities for addressing this problem. This paper presents an approach that would enable manufacturing organisations to dynamically and cost-effectively integrate, optimise, configure, simulate, restructure and control not only their own manufacturing systems but also their supply networks, in a co-ordinated manner to cope with the dynamic changes occurring in a global market. This is realised by a synergy of two emerging manufacturing concepts: Agent-based agile manufacturing systems and e-manufacturing. The concept is to represent a complex manufacturing system and its supply network with an agent-based modelling and simulation architecture and to dynamically generate alternative scenarios with respect to planning, scheduling, configuration and restructure of both the manufacturing system and its supply network based on the coordinated interactions amongst agents.     

Understanding the role of managerial agency in achieving business benefits from ERP systems

Previous enterprise resource planning (ERP) research has identified ‘top management support’ as an important factor in implementation success. However, most studies are short on the detail of exactly how and why ‘top management support’ contributes to ERP success. Moreover, although ‘improved management decision‐making’ is often claimed as a business benefit of ERP systems, there is little evidence in previous ERP research of it having actually occurred. This paper examines the role of managerial agency at all levels in four Australian manufacturing organizations in achieving business benefits from ERP systems during the post‐implementation period. The research contributes to current understanding of the role of managerial agency in achieving business benefits from ERP systems by providing theoretically based, detailed and interesting insights from four interpretive case studies.     

The Future of Enterprise System-Enabled Organizations

Companies are beginning to expect to gain strategic value from the implementation and operation of enterprise systems (ES). Currently dominating trends in business are sense-and-respond business models, globalization, corporate realignment, virtual organizations and accelerated product life-cycles. Available and evolving features of enterprise systems are summarized in a framework, concluding that present capabilities of enterprise systems correspond only to some extend to the new practices required to respond to these corporate challenges, and that ERP vendors strive to fill the gap. By integrating higher management functions enterprise systems will also impact on the practice of executives. The future work of an executive is illustrated by a fictitious example.     

Dominant actors, political agendas, and strategic shifts over time: a critical ethnography of an enterprise systems implementation

Much of the literature on enterprise systems implementation suggests that ERP systems should support the strategic objectives of the organization. In fact some ERP vendors tend to assume that implementing their products is a straightforward translation from strategy to IT-enabled business processes. But the strategic management literature reveals that corporate strategy is often contested terrain. Conflict over strategy has the potential to delay or derail ERP implementation efforts, leading to cost overruns, failures, and lack of expected benefits.This paper seeks to understand and explain how conflicts over strategy can affect the success of ERP implementations. We studied one firm's attempt to pursue information technology-enabled enterprise integration using critical ethnography. The firm is a small-to-medium sized enterprise within a large conglomerate in the Asia-Pacific region. Our findings show that, as the dominant actors and political agendas changed, so too did the company's enterprise integration strategy. The ERP system was designed to support a future corporate world and work environment that never arrived.     

Multimedia databases

The rapidly growing interest in building multimedia tools and applications has created a need for the development of multimedia database management systems (MMDBMSs) as a tool for efficient organization, storage and retrieval of multimedia objects. We begin with a word about traditional database management systems (DBMSs). Then we present an overview of the MMDBMS research issues, challenges, methods, models, and architectures. We review the state of the art and research contributions from related disciplines. Finally, we consider possibilities and probabilities for MMDBMS research in the future.     

A model for selecting an ERP system based on linguistic information processing

An enterprise resource planning (ERP) is an enterprise-wide application software package that integrates all necessary business functions into a single system with a common database. In order to implement an ERP project successfully in an organization, it is necessary to select a suitable ERP system. This paper presents a new model, which is based on linguistic information processing, for dealing with such a problem. In the study, a similarity degree based algorithm is proposed to aggregate the objective information about ERP systems from some external professional organizations, which may be expressed by different linguistic term sets. The consistency and inconsistency indices are defined by considering the subject information obtained from internal interviews with ERP vendors, and then a linear programming model is established for selecting the most suitable ERP system. Finally, a numerical example is given to demonstrate the application of the proposed method.     

Supply chain management ontology from an ontology engineering perspective

Knowledge sharing and reuse are important factors affecting the performance of supply chains. These factors can be amplified in information systems by supply chain management (SCM) ontology. The literature provides various SCM ontologies for a range of industries and tasks. Although many studies make claims of the benefits of SCM ontology, it is unclear to what degree the development of these ontologies is informed by research outcomes from the ontology engineering field. This field has produced a set of specific engineering techniques, which are supposed to help developing quality ontologies. This article reports a study that assesses the adoption of ontology engineering techniques in 16 SCM ontologies. Based on these findings, several implications for research as well as SCM ontology adoption are articulated.     

.NET平台下库存管理系统的设计模式研究

库存管理是ERP系统实施的基础环节,主要实现企业管理中的物资储备的信息化管理,为ERP系统中的采购、生产、销售提供信息、决策支持。结合工程实践,阐述在.NET平台下库存管理软件及其设计模式的相关问题,对开发ERP系统中库存管理具有一定的参考价值。     

Discovering Social Networks from Event Logs

Process mining techniques allow for the discovery of knowledge based on so-called “event logs”, i.e., a log recording the execution of activities in some business process. Many information systems provide such logs, e.g., most WFM, ERP, CRM, SCM, and B2B systems record transactions in a systematic way. Process mining techniques typically focus on performance and control-flow issues. However, event logs typically also log the performer, e.g., the person initiating or completing some activity. This paper focuses on mining social networks using this information. For example, it is possible to build a social network based on the hand-over of work from one performer to the next. By combining concepts from workflow management and social network analysis, it is possible to discover and analyze social networks. This paper defines metrics, presents a tool, and applies these to a real event log within the setting of a large Dutch organization.     

基于电子商务的企业ERP，CRM与SCM整合

ERP，CRM和SCM都是重要的企业应用软件系统，分别侧重于企业的内部资源管理、客户管理和供应链管理。在电子商务环境下，将这些系统相互连接起来融合为一体，在企业内部实行整合，全方位地构建企业业务支持体系，是现代企业经营追求的目标。文中首先分析了电子商务环境下企业的价值链，然后阐述了系统整合的必要性，最后提出了系统整合的解决方案，使企业赢得长久的竞争优势。     

基于J2EE技术的SCM库存管理系统的研究

当今企业实施供应链系统时,关键在于克服传统网络应用技术的缺陷,构建一个分布式、集成化的数据环境,实现信息的充分共享,达到部门之间和企业之间的有效协调。为此,提出了基于J2EE标准的构建供应链库存管理系统的设想。分析了J2EE的基本体系结构之优点。创新点:只要对规则库作适当的修改,就能实现各应用系统间的实时变化,保证分布式库存管理系统的规范性和一致性,加速分布式库存管理系统的流通,提高企业运行效率。     

Toward a cloud-based manufacturing execution system for distributed manufacturing

This paper illustrates the needs and challenges for the management of distributed manufacturing in a multi-company supply chain and processes these further as features of new IT systems. Requirements are collected from manufacturing companies and combined with insights from literature in the field of current ERP/MES system drawbacks, advantages, needs and challenges. The findings show that the needs and challenges in data integration inside SME networks are closely related to the limitations of current supply chain solutions. Current ERP-solutions lack extended enterprise support and a shared cloud-based approach. On the other hand, current MES solutions can operate the manufacturing process, but not for distributed manufacturing. As an answer to the requirements, we made a proposal for the core of architecture for next generation of MES solution in this position paper. Moreover, a pilot software tool has been developed to support the needs related to real time, cloud-based, light weight operation.     

Designing fuzzy-genetic learner model based on multi-agent systems in supply chain management

Supply chain requirements and challenges in recent years have made managers to explore new methods in dealing with supply chain management (SCM) problems. Methods with high flexibility which can adapt plans to real conditions help one to make a decision at the right time.In the SCM, distribution and allocation problems are of enormous significance and due to their applications in the cross-functional and final parts of SCM problems, they are in a particular position among the SCM problems.In this paper, by proposing an architecture based up on multi-agent system (MAS), a model is developed to tackle such problems as the nature of supply chain distributions, dynamic distributions systems (DS), uncertain parameters in DS, management of diverse objectives in DS, need for flexibility in DS and other factors considered as challenges and designing requirements in an agile model which can be all found in the SCM. MAS was used in this article owing to their special attributes and features. In MAS, each agent follows up a duty in a self-contained way and is able to adapt it to the environmental changes, after all helping the system to stay alive.     

Enterprise Resource Planning as the Trojan Horse for New Rules of Operations Management

The control of operations, for example; the flow of materials, the scheduling of production, the planning of capacity – these are central problem in operations management. A substantial body of technique, with attendant technologies, has been developed to facilitate the problem of control of operations. One such technique is Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP). This technique has developed in power and scope in concert with the development of power in computer based technology. From the perspective of the operations management literature, MRP has evolved into MRP II, and now into Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). MRP, and MRP II are systems that are embedded within the operations function, and can be controlled legitimately by the operations function; ERP is fundamentally different. ERP systems in their model implementation are enterprise wide, integrated systems. As an enterprise wide system, ERP has created an opportunity to distance the power to influence operations actions from the location of the function. This change has significant implications for the companies adopting the technology, and more specifically, for the profession of operations management. This paper develops a framework of analysis for this change, presents a set of small cases, and discusses some implications that can be drawn from the analysis. The “three arenas of information use – sense making, knowledge creating, and decision making” (Choo 1998, p.3) must be allowed to energize each other and this can only happen if organization wide information systems, such as ERP, respect and empower situated action, enable ambiguity, and allow the use of multiple interpretive frames as managers interact with the situations of operations management.