All 8 entries tagged Erp Systems

The Role of ERP in globalisation

Nowadays, more and more organisations provide products and services globally. They operate in different countries and in different locations; Also they have their manufacturing plants, regional sales offices, distribution centre, national, regional and global headquarters throughout the world. However, it brings the challenges for ERP, like legal and business principles of the country, multi-currency operations, language barrier (especially in developing countries).

The role of ERP is to use all available organisation resources efficiently. In general, it ensures flexibility of the company and creates the environment for achieving core competence of the organisations. Also, it can be identified as the critical component of corporate globalisation strategies and be required to satisfy the demands of support functionalities in a global environment- such as intercompany stock transfer, software localisation.

The survey from the Gartner Research study had identified that 70% of organisations desired to operate a single global ERP system. However, a centralised ERP solution is slow to implement in a global environment. And the company may have to change their existing IT solutions- from many to one, which requires a large amount of time. As a result, a better choice for the companies two-tier ERP solution, which means the company can use one core ERP with another solution from same vendor for subsidiaries or one core ERP with other solution from another one vendor.

Mengyun Hu (1862091)

Mengyun Hu : 21 May 2019 19:36 |  Tags: Erp Erp Systems Integration |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The Role of the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) in the Business Process Re–engineering (BPR):

The fast movement in the technological world and the new systems that have been developed though the time has played a significant role into re-engineering the business process within any organization. According to Soliman and Youssef (1998), the implementation of ERP is considered to be one of the fundamental element of the BPR process, where the others include objectives, radical change and the examination of the current process. Most companies used to employee IT to the present process, where BPR process needs a radical change to the process. Thus, the implementation of ERP systems is helpful in terms of changing the current process to be aligned with ERP system, which will meet the BPR objective as well as it will be more integrated and productive (Soliman and Youssef, 1998).

On the other hand, Baloglu (2005) suggested that the implementation of ERP systems needs to be aligned with the BPR projects, which will give employees time to accommodate of using the new system. Thus, training employees is an important element in the implementation of ERP and BPR, where might be fail if not applied sufficiently (Glykas, 2013).

References

Baloglu, A. (2005) Implementing SAP R/3 in the 21st Century: Methodology and Case Studies, Istanbul: Anatürkler Yayınevi.

Glykas, M. (2012) ‘Effects of business process reengineering on firm performance: an econometric analysis’ in Ozcelik, y. (ed.) Business Process Management: Theory and Applications. London: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 99-111.

Soliman, F. and Youssef, M. A. (1998) ‘The role of SAP software in business process re-engineering’. International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 18 (9): 886 – 895.

: 28 Mar 2016 18:33 |  Tags: Erp Erp Systems |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

ERP system and Internet of Things

In recent years, many ERP systems have competed each other by trying to provide the best solution for improving the business. After introducing cloud-based platform i.e. SAP HANA, Oracle ERP Cloud, Microsoft Dynamic cloud ERP and so on, they tried to seek for other new technologies to support the organisation. However, this article will only focus on SAP solution. While the user of internet has dramatically grown every year, and devices has become more and more intelligent. From SAP’s research, they found that the number of connected devices through the internet would be more than fifty billion by 2020. They expected that many physical objects would be able to communicate via the internet. The internet of things (IoT) can be defined as the integration of several technologies such as RFID, sensor, actuators, and wireless network (Atzori, Iera and Morabito, 2010).

 As last few year ago, SAP introduced an additional solution (IoT connector solution) which can use to connect sensor-based data with SAP HANA platform. This solution will combine data from automation devices and smart devices to perform a better retrospective and predictive analysis. Moreover, there are several benefits that the organisation can gain from these technologies solution.

• Improve efficiency, sustainability, quality, and safety
• Increase decision-making performance
• Improve decentralised data consistency
• Reduce operation cost
• Simplify software integration

Although, this solution may not be suitable for every business, there are some businesses can use it to improve their processes such as manufacturing, supply chain integrity, energy, health service and so on. But, they still have some major technical issues that require to consider. For example, Internet scalability, identification and addressing of the network, heterogeneity technologies (Haller, Karnouskos and Schroth, 2008).

Atzori, L., Iera, A. and Morabito, G. (2010). The Internet of Things: A survey. Computer Networks, 54(15), pp.2787-2805.

Haller, S., Karnouskos, S. and Schroth, C. (2008). The Internet of Things in an Enterprise Context. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pp.14-28.

SAP. (2016). IoT Platform | Internet of Things Applications | SAP HANA. [online] Available at: http://go.sap.com/product/technology-platform/iot-platform-cloud.html.

Chompassorn Pholtanasak (1465063)

: 28 Mar 2016 15:08 |  Tags: Cloud Erp Erp Systems Integration |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Gartner Magic Quadrant for single instance ERP systems.

Writing about web page http://www.gartner.com/technology/reprints.do?id=1-25C3331&ct=141201&st=sb

According to Gartner's latest research (2014), Microsoft Dynamics AX was is positioned as a market visionary and leader. Microsoft Dynamics AX is being increasingly adopted by large companies with thousands of users. From Gartner's research, it is ascertained that customers rate the quality, usability , flexibility and scalability of Microsoft's solution highly.

Dynamix AX is Mircorosft's flagship ERP solution. AX incorporates fincance, HR, operations management, and specific capabilities for retail, manufacturing, service and public sector industries.

Strengths

• Strong execution of partner product innovation strategy
• Strong user interface and flexibility in comparison to others in the market
• Product quality and scalability has been consistently high
• Enahncement and incorporation of services such as Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services
• Strong CRM capabilities.

Another good example of an ERP solution is Epicor, who according to Gartner is another market visionary. Since it's launch in 2008, Epicor has experienced significant growth in terms of sales of their on-premise and cloud solutions.

To read the complete report visit the following link:

http://www.gartner.com/technology/reprints.do?id=1-25C3331&ct=141201&st=sb

: 26 Apr 2015 22:42 |  Tags: Erp Systems Gartner Magic Quadrant |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The Silo Effect (Information Silo)

This article will discuss about The Silo Effect, its drawback in a functional organization and how ERP systems like SAP helps to manage it.

Employees in the different functional areas have tendency to perform their steps in the process in isolation, without fully understanding which steps happened before and which steps will happen after. They are just focused on their specific tasks which lose the sight of the “big picture” of the larger process. This is known as the Silo Effect or Information Silo.

To make it simpler to understand, let’s take an example of our batch where we have completed GBI simulation exercise on SAP system. By using this ERP System, We (ERPI-Module Students) performed a series of tasks for Sales and Distribution (SD) Case Study, taking on roles of various people involved to perform an integrated order-to-cash cycle. This gave us the “big picture” of the larger process however in real life without the support of ERP system, Mr. Mathias Dosch was using the new information to create a customer inquiry. While, Mr. David Lopez was responsible for creating a customer quotation and sales order, unaware and not concerned with customer inquiry generation process. This continues further where he is not concerned with the new details being used by Mr. Sandeep Das to check the stock in warehouse to fulfil new sales order.

Moving on, this silo nature of the functional organizational structure can be a drawback. The employees are completing their specific tasks without regards to the consequences for the other components in the process. This is simply reducing the co-ordination amongst them. Companies nowadays require “think side-ways” attitude from their employees. Therefore, ERP systems are helpful in managing business processes efficiently and we have already experienced this advantage by using them during our simulation exercise.

The learning outcome from this article is that to view a business process from end to end is essential in understanding how enterprise systems help businesses manage their processes efficiently and this understanding has become a critical skill that companies have come to demand from their employees.

Article by Muhammad Umer Noonari (1461606)

Reference: Magal, Simha, and Jeffrey Word. Integrated Business Processes With ERP Systems. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2012. Print.

Muhammad Umer Noonari : 29 Mar 2015 19:15 |  Tags: Erp Systems Sap-Erp-Terp10 |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The integration of ERP System and Lean Manufacturing

Lean manufacturing encourages the production efficiency through eliminating waste and ERP helps to integrate the business process and also to provide some real-time information that will support the managerial decision-making. However, in the lean manufacturing, ERP might be identified as a source of waste because it can create the excess inventory, slow production and less flexibility. Furthermore, ERP system usually requires data, which is not used to control or improve the business process and also sometimes the gap between the actual business process and the ERP system is too big. It is therefore there is on-going debate whether ERP system can support Lean manufacturing or not.

The major conflicts lies within production scheduling and material planning. ERP system depends on the forecast demand for planning the material whilst lean manufacturing encourages ‘pull’ system in which the production scheduling is driven by the customer demand. Consequently the inventory will be kept as minimum as possible possibly through kanban card and any other lean manufacturing tools.

Despite this argument, lean concept requires high data quality and accuracy in which ERP system does support. The quality of data helps the company in solving the problem and sustaining the continuous improvement if data is managed properly. Furthermore, The ERP system that doesn’t involve directly with the production/outside the factory plant does support the Lean manufacturing very good, for example ERP can help the decision whether to accept or reject the order by calculating the capacity in which the ordering can be processed faster. Consequently it helps the company to reduce the lead-time in overall and this is aligned with the one of lean manufacturing concept, which is to shorten the lead-time.

However, the biggest impact in determining the lead-time lies in the production line. Setup and cycle time can bring impact to the lead-time and these are tracked in the ERP system so that the wasted time in those processes can be eliminated gradually. In addition to that, The Business Intelligence, which is part of the ERP, helps the company to monitor their performance.

It is therefore important for the company that adopt lean practices to select which ERP systems that suitable for their business process especially if it involves the production line and subsequently adjust that ERP system in accordance with their need so that the gaps between the actual business process and ERP system model can be reduced. Nowadays, there are some ERP software firms that make their product support lean manufacturing. One example of those is Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012.

Source:

Daryl Powell, Jan Riezebos & Jan Ola Strandhagen (2013): Lean production and ERP systems in smalland medium-sized enterprises: ERP support for pull production, International Journal of Production Research, 51:2, 395-409

Lean manufacturing and ERP: How to leverage ERP to get lean. Available online at<http://www.iqms.com/products/brochures/eBook_LeverageToLean.pdf> [Accessed on 1 April 2013]

Can Lean and ERP Work Together. Available online at <http://www.industryweek.com/systems-integration/can-lean-and-erp-work-together> [Accessed on 1 April 2013]

Evan Widyanto Tjoa : 28 Apr 2013 16:23 |  Tags: Erp Systems Lean |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Extract datas from ERP system to BI system

BI (Business Intelligence) system is a data analysis tool and ERP system is an online translation processing system. Are there any relationships between these two systems? The answer is certainly yes. Moreover, let us take oil industry as an example, the ERP system is just like an oil field, and BI is an oil refining tool. During the oil refining period, we need the basic raw materials????oil. The oil is the data which is stored in the ERP system.

The users always worry about three problems when they extract data from ERP system to Business Intelligence system. First of all, the company should ensure the integrity of the data. If the data is incomplete, it may cause a great deal of problems. What is more, the data should be accurate. This is due to the fact that the accuracy of data is playing a vital role in the whole information system. Last but not least, the data must be extracted in time. If the data can not reach to the BI system timely, it is useless at all. The data extracting solution will be successful when these three problems are solved.

In realistic working process, data selection can be divided into two parts. The first part is initialized extracting, normally people will use totally extracting pattern during this process. That is to say, people will copy the entire data from ERP system to BI system without any modifications. It will last for a long time if the database of the enterprise is big. Furthermore, the second part is the follow-up extracting. After the first data selection finished, the data may be changed as the global market is changing all the time. In this case, people will not apply total replacement method into data selection. Instead, they will just update the new information into the database. It is efficient, convenient and money-saving to use this method.

: 23 May 2011 04:55 |  Tags: Bi Data Erp Systems |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Stages in the implementation of an ERP System

Today, ERP systems play a major role in many global organisations, multinational to SMEs. These were implemented in order to save operating costs, integrate multiple incompatible systems, improve performance of business functions, access real-time information and at the turn of the century, in order to achieve Y2K compliance. Advocates of these systems are quick to highlight these benefits. Yet, apart from the hefty price tag, there are many not so obvious hurdles to the successful execution of ERP systems.

During her research in conjunction with Benchmarking Partners, Jeanne Ross from the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology surveyed executives from a number of manufacturing organisations. Of importance was the varied perspective gained by interviewing executives at three levels of each organisation: senior managers who sponsored the implementation, project managers responsible for the implementation and managers of business units affected by the system.

The first stage in the implementation of an ERP system is the Design stage. Of importance during this period is understanding the general assumptions made by system developers, which is unlike traditional systems development where systems are built in support of processes, and not matching processes to systems. Management decisions on the level of standardisation also plays a key role in this stage.

The Implementation stage which typically lasts upto a year, sees performance drop drastically across the organisation. The integration with or replacement of legacy systems requires training of staff and sees the disruption of normal operations. Methods to continuously monitor the impact of the ERP system need to be put in place.

The Stabilization stage which follows is an opportunity to get familiarized with the new system, verify and if required modify business processes and iron out irregularities. Like in all the stages, resistance to the system is common to be encountered. Apart from training, incentives to successful implementation can be offered.

The next Continuous Improvement stage is one of consolidation. Being expensive and disruptive to implement, many organisations do so in modules. By first trialling the system in across a business unit or geographical region, difficulties are identified and addressed before the system is expanded further.

The Transformation stage of an ERP system implementation is when organisations see a marked improvement in key performance indicators. These vary between organisations but can often be quantified in monetary terms.

Ross, J. W. (1999). Surprising Facts About Implementing ERP. IT Professional , 1 (4), 65-68.

: 09 Jul 2010 23:51 |  Tags: Erp Systems Implementation Stages |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem