Impact of visualization type and contextual factors on performance with enterprise resource planning systems

We studied the use of two types of graphic information visualization to support human operators performing tasks using enterprise resource planning systems (ERP). We compared the original display design of a commercial ERP system with a prototype information visualization design. A simulated supply chain was used to test the hypothesis that graphical visualization can improve the performance of the human operator using ERP systems for supply chain management. Tasks from the production and purchasing domains were tested in the experiment in which experienced and inexperienced human operators had to perform tasks of an easy, moderate, and difficult nature. Analysis of the results revealed that the two types of graphical visualization significantly reduced response time, particularly with inexperienced users performing difficult tasks. Our results imply that some graphic information visualization displays for ERP systems can increase the probability of a successful implementation and enhance the capabilities of the human operators.     

Distributed planning and control systems for the virtual enterprise: organizational requirements and development life-cycle

This paper describes the requirements analysis and system specification of an Order Promise module to be used as part of a broader Decision Support System for production and operations planning of a Virtual Enterprise. This work is part of a broader project with a particular focus on the microelectronics industry which is a good example of Virtual Enterprise, and where a quick response to the customers needs and to unpredictable changes in production conditions is considered a major factor for success. First, the analysis and specification are presented within a development framework that involves the study of organizational issues of semiconductor enterprises. The use of ontological engineering for supporting the communication and shared understanding of the system concepts is explained and a virtual enterprise ontology is outlined. Following the clarification of the concept of virtual enterprise, the generic techno-organizational requirements for the information system are derived. Finally, a specification of the global planning module and a more detailed one regarding the order promise module is presented.     

Modeling use of enterprise resource planning systems: a path analytic study

In this research, we evaluated user participation and involvement in the context of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Since ERP systems are enterprise-wide in scope, these systems have a high level of complexity, and require a different implementation methodology. While most studies analyze implementation at an organization or industry level, there is a dearth in research in ERP system adoption at the individual or user level. In our study, we examine ERP system acceptance at the individual level. In this research, we expected to find differences in the nature of user participation and involvement in ERP compared to other information systems. Using Barki and Hartwick's extension of the theory of reasoned action, a revised model was developed and tested empirically. While Barki and Hartwick's model explains user behavior vis-à-vis user participation and involvement, a more parsimonious model demonstrates that usage dynamics in ERP implementation are different. We complemented our statistical analysis by three case studies. Based on our results we believe that, given the nature of ERP and its implementation, traditionally formalized links between influencers of users' attitude and involvement may need to be revised. We have discussed why we need to seek alternate forms of influencers. In doing so, we suggest that investments be made in preparatory work practices and employee development prior to ERP decisions. Such investments are complementary to information technology and are widespread throughout the firm. We believe that such investments will play a significant role in influencing the attitude of users toward any system and also their involvement.     

The implementation of enterprise resource planning packages in different organisational and national cultures

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) packages provide generic off-the-shelf business and software solutions to customers. However, these packages are implemented in companies with different organisational and national cultures, and there is growing evidence that failure to adapt ERP packages to fit these cultures leads to projects that are expensive and late. This paper describes research that synthesises social science theories of culture to handle the impact of culture on ERP package implementation more efficiently. It describes a knowledge meta-schema for modelling the surface and the deeper manifestations of culture. It reports an empirical study into the implementation of SAP R/3's sales and distribution (SD) module in a large pharmaceuticals organisation in Scandinavia and the UK. Results provide evidence for an association between organisational culture and ERP implementation problems but no direct evidence for an association between national culture and implementation problems. Furthermore, results demonstrate that these diverse implementation problems can be caused by a mismatch between a small set of core values indicative of a customer's organisational culture. At the end of the paper, our predictions are reviewed, conclusions are made about them and about the work of the key authors of national and organisational culture, and future work is discussed.     

Assessing the impact of quality determinants and user characteristics on successful enterprise resource planning project implementation

As barriers to transnational trade and investment have been lowered due to globalization, and information and communication technologies have improved, multinational firms can conduct operations with increased ease. Enterprises can also utilize cost-advantageous production resources and export products to expand their global market. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems serve the purpose and have become useful instruments for managing multinational operations. Notably, ERP systems integrate information platforms to reflect operations at each operation point in real time and generate information as a basis for decision-making and resource allocations. Thus, ERP systems are essential to global logistics management and collaboration. However, vertical and horizontal evaluations of information systems are necessary to determining the effectiveness and success of project implementation. This study examines the impact of quality determinants from literature in assessing benefits using an information systems success model. The cause-and-effect relationships between model constructs are tested using structural equation modeling. An empirical study of leading manufacturers adopting ERP systems is used to investigate corporate benefits related to information quality, system quality, service quality, system use, and user satisfaction. The analytical results can be a reference for practitioners and researchers evaluating the effectiveness of management information systems.     

Drivers and effects of enterprise resource planning post-implementation learning

The use of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems has grown enormously since 1990, but the failure to completely learn how to use them continues to produce disappointing results. Today's rapidly changing business environment and the integrative applications of ERP systems force users to continuously learn new skills after ERP implementation. This study explores the effects of post-implementation learning on ERP usage and ERP impact and identifies the factors that can impact post-implementation learning, such as social capital and post-training self-efficacy. This study employs a survey method to examine the perceptions of ERP users. The theoretical model is tested by using structural equation modelling on a dataset of 812 users. This study finds that post-implementation learning has a significant positive effect on ERP usage and ERP impact, and that social capital and post-training self-efficacy are important antecedent factors of post-implementation learning. Post-training self-efficacy also significantly affects ERP usage and ERP impact. The implications for research, practice and future research directions are discussed.     

Competitive advantage of enterprise resource planning vendors in Iran

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) has become one of the competitive advantages for companies around the globe and the dynamic force driving the process of global integration through information. Governmental organizations are increasing their adoption of these systems for various benefits such as integrated real-time information, better administration, and result-based management. Reaching the standard level of being a global company, organizations are concerned about this application and invest in this project for many years and, as a result, help the company reduce the cost and increase the efficiency and effectiveness. Iranian organizations, along with multi-national companies, attempt to be a good player in the flow of this change. The primary purpose of this study is to investigate and determine the competitive environment of ERP vendors implementing their product in Iranian context. The authors investigated the activities of both international and local ERP vendors established in the country and analyzed them by their advantages and potentials.     

Job performance through mobile enterprise systems: The role of organizational agility,location independence,and task characteristics

This study examines how organizational workers improve their perceived job performance through the use of Mobile Enterprise Systems (MES), while also investigating the impact of perceived organizational agility and location independence on technology acceptance of MES. This study also tests the moderating role of task characteristics (task significance and feedback) on the relationship between MES usage and perceived job performance. Based on the extant technology acceptance model (TAM), we proposed an extended TAM and conducted a large-scale survey among organizational workers who use MES in their workplace across industries. Our findings suggest that both positive attitude toward MES and a high level of habitual MES usage are positively associated with perceived job performance, and that task characteristics positively moderate the relationship between habitual usage (attitude toward MES) and perceived job performance. More importantly, we also found that organizational agility is positively associated with both perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness, while location independence is positively associated with perceived ease of use. The present findings provide us with a deeper understanding of how organizational workers utilize MES and how they improve their perceived job performance through the use of MES. Based on these findings, we discuss further implications and limitations.     

多智能体柔性企业资源计划系统模型的研究

针对传统企业资源计划（ERP）系统在处理复杂的、动态的、不确定的企业资源计划等工作时,缺乏足够的自适应性,智能性,灵活性处理能力,采用多智能体技术,将ERP系统中的各种功能及软件模块分解转换为智能体,提出和构造了一个具有高可塑性和高自主性的多智能体柔性企业资源计划系统的模型和软件体系结构,并对模型进行了讨论。     

A study of enterprise resource planning (ERP) system performance measurement using the quantitative balanced scorecard approach

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems have been used in integrating information and accelerating its distribution across functions and departments with the aim to increase organizations’ operational performance. Thus, it is worth measuring ERP system performance based on its impact to critical performance of an organization: this requires a systematic method that bridges ERP performance measurement and key organizational performance. The hierarchical balanced scorecard (HBSC) model with respect to multiple criteria decision-making is such a systematic approach to ERP performance measurement. An ERP evaluation framework that integrates the balanced scorecard dimensions, linguistic variables, and non-additive fuzzy integral provides an objective approach to measuring both the performance level of the ERP system and its contribution to the strategic objectives of high-tech firms. Taking Taiwan’s high-tech firms as an example, this study demonstrates the effectiveness of this integrated approach to measure the performance of ERP systems at the post-implementation stage under evaluators’ subjective, uncertainty, and vagueness judgments.     

The effect of computer self-efficacy on enterprise resource planning usage

Global competition has impelled numerous organisations to employ enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, although quite frequently without success. Studies have demonstrated that a major factor for failure is employee resistance in organisations using these systems. Exactly the factors that facilitate ERP adoption among users have seldom been identified. This study examines the usage behaviour of a sample of users of the new technology of ERP system using a technology acceptance model (TAM). Furthermore, this paper incorporates an additional behavioural construct, computer self-efficacy (CSE), to improve the predictive value of the original TAM model, named revised TAM. Additionally, the structural equation model (SEM) is used to verify the causal relationships between variables. Analytical results confirm that not only is the TAM appropriate for explaining the use of ERP, but that incorporating CSE enhances the power of the model.     

The effect of computer self-efficacy on enterprise resource planning usage

Global competition has impelled numerous organisations to employ enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, although quite frequently without success. Studies have demonstrated that a major factor for failure is employee resistance in organisations using these systems. Exactly the factors that facilitate ERP adoption among users have seldom been identified. This study examines the usage behaviour of a sample of users of the new technology of ERP system using a technology acceptance model (TAM). Furthermore, this paper incorporates an additional behavioural construct, computer self-efficacy (CSE), to improve the predictive value of the original TAM model, named revised TAM. Additionally, the structural equation model (SEM) is used to verify the causal relationships between variables. Analytical results confirm that not only is the TAM appropriate for explaining the use of ERP, but that incorporating CSE enhances the power of the model.     

Design, implementation, and performance of an extensible toolkit for resource prediction in distributed systems

RPS is a publicly available toolkit that allows a practitioner to straightforwardly create flexible online and offline resource prediction systems in which resources are represented by independent, periodically sampled, scalar-valued measurement streams. The systems predict the future values of such streams from past values and are composed at runtime out of a large and extensible set of communicating components that are in turn constructed using RPS's extensible sensor, prediction, wavelet, and communication libraries. This paper describes the design, implementation, and performance of RPS. We have used RPS extensively to evaluate predictive models and build online prediction systems for host load, Windows performance data, and network bandwidth. The computation and communication overheads involved in such systems are quite low.     

基于企业资源管理的物料供应链管理

为有效解决目前企业中物料供应存在的计划周期长、收货速度慢、准确性差等问题，对企业资源管理（Enterprise Resource Planning，ERP）进行介绍，基于一个ERP项目——企业-供应商关系管理（Electronic-Supplier Relationship Management，e-SRM）描述物料供应链管理系统解决方案的设计思想、整体采构、业务流程、关键技术和系统特点等，可解决供需双方信息沟通不畅和物料供应困难等问题。     

An empirical investigation of six levels of enterprise resource planning integration

The purpose of this research is to propose a six-level ERP integration model and to empirically investigate if each of the six levels exists. The six levels are system-specification, system–user, islands-of-technology, organizational, socio-organizational, and global integration. Empirical data were collected by using a large-scale survey of ERP professionals. We conducted various validity and reliability tests to confirm the proposed theoretical framework. Using partial least squares (PLSs) analysis, the results of the investigation confirmed the existence of the six levels of ERP integration. The results of the investigation have implications for research and practice.     

Interorganizational and organizational determinants of planning effectiveness for Internet-based interorganizational systems

Internet-based interorganizational systems (IIOS) planning is based on a portfolio of systems that integrate organizational and interorganizational processes and assist a firm in realizing its objectives. However, very limited empirical research has been performed to evaluate the factors that influence IIOS planning effectiveness. Research from trading partnerships, organizational theory, and the literature were used to identify two interorganizational variables (competitive pressure and trading partner readiness) and three organizational variables (top management support, organizational centralization, and technology competence) that are important in planning success. This study then examined the influence of these five variables on IIOS planning effectiveness. Data gathered from 202 CIOs in large Taiwanese organizations were employed to test the relationships between the research model constructs using a structural equation modeling (SEM) approach; the study provided strong support for the hypotheses: certain factors related to interorganizational and organizational factors were found to influence IIOS planning effectiveness. The implications of this finding are discussed.     

A framework for addressing the organisational issues of enterprise systems implementation

Over the last 10 years many organisations have made significant investments in Enterprise-wide Systems (ES), particularly Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software packages. Whilst in most cases technical implementation is relatively successful, many of the initiatives have failed to deliver the benefits expected. Research studies have identified a wide range of factors, that can affect the success of ES implementations, and the general consensus is that organisational issues are more difficult to resolve than technical ones.This research set out to synthesise a framework, from prior research, for analysing and understanding these organisational issues and to apply and refine the framework by studying four ES initiatives in different organisational and industry contexts. The findings from the case studies suggest that the framework can help understand how different approaches to managing ES implementations both address and influence the behaviours of key interest groups and hence the achievement of the benefits expected from the investment.     

A fuzzy model to evaluate the suitability of installing an enterprise resource planning system

The use of enterprise resource planning (ERP) as a foundation for the integration of the complete range of business processes and functions, is clearly useful and economically profitable in most very large organizations which manage a great deal of data in their information systems. However, the decision of installing an ERP system in all the companies is not always so clear, it will depend on the size, future profits and other features of the company. Therefore, different parameters (features, aspects) will be evaluated to make a decision about the suitability of the ERP system. These parameters might have different nature or the knowledge about them could be vague or imprecise. Thus, this implies that it would be suitable that the evaluation process can manage heterogeneous information. In this paper we shall present a fuzzy evaluation model to evaluate the suitability of an ERP system based on a multi-expert decision-making (ME-DM) process that is able to deal with heterogeneous information.     

Coding-error based defects in enterprise resource planning software: Prevention,discovery, elimination and mitigation

Software defects due to coding errors continue to plague the industry with disastrous impact, especially in the enterprise application software category. Identifying how much of these defects are specifically due to coding errors is a challenging problem. In this paper, we investigate the best methods for preventing new coding defects in enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, and discovering and fixing existing coding defects. A large-scale survey-based ex-post-facto study coupled with experiments involving static code analysis tools on both sample code and real-life million lines of code open-source ERP software were conducted for such purpose. The survey-based methodology consisted of respondents who had experience developing ERP software. This research sought to determine if software defects could be merely mitigated or totally eliminated, and what supporting policies, procedures and infrastructure were needed to remedy the problem. In this paper, we introduce a hypothetical framework developed to address our research questions, the hypotheses we have conjectured, the research methodology we have used, and the data analysis methods used to validate the stated hypotheses. Our study revealed that: (a) the best way for ERP developers to discover coding-error based defects in existing programs is to choose an appropriate programming language; perform a combination of manual and automated code auditing, static code analysis, and formal test case design, execution and analysis, (b) the most effective ways to mitigate defects in an ERP system is to track the defect densities in the ERP software, fix the defects found, perform regression testing, and update the resulting defect density statistics, and (c) the impact of epistemological and legal commitments on the defect densities of ERP systems is inconclusive.We feel that our proposed model has the potential to vastly improve the quality of ERP and other similar software by reducing the coding-error defects, and recommend that future research aimed at testing the model in actual production environments.