مدل معادلات ساختاری برای تجزیه و تحلیل تاثیر برنامه ریزی منابع سازمانی (ERP) بر مدیریت زنجیره تامین (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.

Business organizations today are facing a more complex and competitive environment than ever before (Chen and Lin, 2009a and Ellram, 1991). Business success is no longer a matter of analyzing only the individual firm, but rather the chain of delivering and supplying organizations; the individual firm is only a single part of the supply chain. Therefore, companies are focusing on supply chain strategies to streamline internal operations, boost plant productivity, improve product quality, and reduce manufacturing costs. One reason for these initiatives is the substantial cost reductions to be achieved by improving the firm competences of supply chain management. Another reason is the advent of the Internet economy. The internet is challenging the traditional supply chain structures that firms have employed to get goods and services to markets (Rahman, 2003). Markets are becoming more transparent; customer demands are being met in a more customized manner, and the rate of change in the business world keeps increasing (Ellram, 1991). All these developments are having a profound impact on the enterprises of supply chains. Therefore, how to enhance the firm competences on supply chain management is becoming more important. The literature on new business models for the Internet age is growing rapidly. In particular, Fine (1998) has pointed out that as the business environment changes, supply chain design is becoming a core competence. At the same time, another business-driven phenomenon, the adoption of enterprise resource planning (ERP), is sweeping across industry. Adoption of ERP systems may motivated by pressure from competitors, or by requests from partners or customers in the supply chain for linkage or system upgrades, or simply by the need to replace the legacy systems. When ERP systems are fully realized in a business organization, they can be expected to yield many benefits: reduction of cycle time; faster transactions; better financial management; the laying of the groundwork for e-commerce; and making tacit knowledge explicit. Since the potential benefits are large, many organizations are willing to undertake the difficult process of converting from whatever they currently use to an ERP system. Installing an ERP system is, however, an expensive and risky venture (Chen and Lin, 2009b and Markus and Yanis, 2000). Roach (1991) stated that although business was investing huge sums of money in IT, positive results could not yet be observed in the US economy. Strassman (1990) also failed to find positive returns from IT investments in his study of IT expenditures in the 1980s. Other researchers during this same time period found similar outcomes (Pentland, 1989). More recent, evidence, though, has, on the contrary, demonstrated large benefits from IT investments and uncovered significant productivity gains from IT. Other recent studies (Hitt and Brynjolffson, 1996 and Mukhopadhyay et al., 1995) have argued persuasively that enough evidence has been gathered on the positive effects of IT to justify the conclusion that ERP investment does pay off.

This paper provides empirical justification for a model that identifies three key constructs of ERP benefits and three key constructs of SCM competences. It confirms that all constructs of ERP benefits enhance firm competences of SCM. More specifically, there are 18 main items of ERP benefits that impact on 17 items of SCM competences. In view of this result, we can conclude that the confirmation of the overall proposed model was important because it provided empirical evidence that ERP benefits do really impact firm competences of SCM. In considering the results of this study, although the validation of the variables that measure the ERP benefits and SCM competences came from the data of Taiwanese IT companies, the nature of the factors appeared to be universal, because Taiwanese IT companies have achieved outstanding results over the past two decades, and have the capabilities to cooperate with all of the members on the supply chain closely so as to be able to react to any unexpected changes. The validity and reliability of this measure were acceptable. The measure also took into account many different facets of the supply chain, from relationships with suppliers to relationships with customers and the activities in between. The study developed measures for ERP benefits’ impact on the SCM competences model. Although validity and reliability checks were performed on the measures, there is still room for improvement. If we can use more measures for firm competences drawn from the software or consultant companies in stead of self-reporting by the firms, the results will be more convincing. The limitation is that it seems most of the consultant companies did not keep records or did not trace back or evaluate the firm’s performance after the project was finished. Furthermore, while the sample consisted of Taiwanese IT industry companies, it might be better to collect data from IT industry companies of other countries, such as Korea, Singapore, and China. As the concept of SCM is complex and involves a network of companies all involved in the effort of producing and delivering a final product, its entire domain cannot be covered in just one study. Future research can expand the domain of SCM practice by considering additional constructs such as financial impact, comprehensive metrics, and JIT/lean capability, which were not included in this study.