The development of an enterprise resources planning system using a hierarchical design pyramid

Today, manufacturers are measured by their ability to respond quickly to sudden, often unpredictable changes in customer needs and wants. Competition beyond the twenty-first century places an increased emphasis upon receiving business information that is accurate and up to date. In order to achieve this, a business planning and closed-loop manufacturing execution system must reflect how work is done, in order to support the overall business objectives without being limited by any hardware, software and human resource constraints. Enterprise resources planning (ERP) is considered to be the most effective computer application in the modern manufacturing industry which meets these requirements. However, only a few manufacturers can design and implement the system successfully. They encounter various problems during the design and implementation cycle. One of the major reasons why they cannot implement the system successfully is the inappropriate use of design and implementation methodology. A systematic design and implementation methodology is therefore proposed for ERP. Called the hierarchical design pyramid (HDP), it encompasses recent research on the ICAM definition method (IDEF) and the object-oriented methodology (OOM) as well as an architecture for any manufacturers who seriously consider ERP implementation.