سیستم های برنامه ریزی منابع سازمانی و تاثیرات آن بر روی عملکرد عملیات

Over the last decade, our world has changed dramatically due to the growing phenomenon of globalization and revolution in information technology. There is tremendous demand on companies to lower costs, enlarge product assortment, improve product quality, and provide reliable delivery dates through effective and efficient coordination of production and distribution activities. To achieve these conflicting goals, companies must constantly re-engineer or change their business practices and employ information systems. In 1990s, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems have emerged as an enabling technology, which integrates various functional (operations, marketing, finance) information systems into a seamless suite of business applications across the company and thereby, allowed for streamlined processing of business data and cross-functional integration. Thus, ERP systems provide an enticing solution to managers who have struggles with incompatible information systems and inconsistent operations policies. However, successful implementation of ERP systems requires active participation from senior-level managers from various functional areas so as to delineate its impact on the business level as well as functional level strategies. In this paper, we have endeavored to provide operations managers a brief overview of ERP systems and highlight its implications for operations function. Specifically, the objective of this paper is to give a broad based overview of enterprise resource planning systems. Using SAP R/3 as an example system, we discuss how an ERP system can assist in enhancing strengthening business strategy and making consistent operations decisions: process design, production planning and scheduling, inventory management, quality management, human resource management.

Due to dynamism in the current borderless world market, companies are confronting new markets as well as new competition. Decision-making processes are requiring different time horizons and geographical dispersions. Consequently, decisions require quick changes regarding product developments, material flows, production planning, and scheduling. It is necessary for companies to evolve ways to keep operational efficiency at its peak, i.e. in terms of high levels of flexibility, dependability and quality. Consequently, matrix or decentralized organizational structure that crosses functional areas and encompasses a multitude of business processes is being adopted by many organizations. Compared to function-oriented hierarchical organizations where information transfer is inflexible and slow-a decentralized process oriented structure is where information flow is highly flexible, fast and disjointed (Keller, 1999). Historically, companies had maintained different information systems for different business functions such as accounting, production, marketing, purchasing, etc. These legacy systems had their own methods and systems of collecting and storing information based upon their needs. Although these systems enabled managers to improve decision making within a specific functional area, these systems lacked functional integration and made communication and cooperation among business functions exceedingly difficult. Consequently, a company as a whole is loosing its competitive edges because it is not able to realize its full potential. In 1990s, companies implemented variants of ERP systems with a central/common database and standardized software to replace stand-alone legacy systems and to create necessary interface among functional areas. Conceptually speaking, ERP systems enable all functional areas ‘talk’ directly to each other and the data availability to all in real-time to prevent non-optimal decision making (Jacobs and Whybark, 2000). An important characteristic of ERP systems is the ability to implement it in modules. A company does not have to perform a full-scale implementation rather selective modules (where a module usually represents a functional area of an organization) can be implemented based on the needs of a particular company (Gupta, 2000). Some of the most important reasons companies implementing ERP systems cite are to improve the level of systems integration, and to standardize as well as improve processes. The belief that ERP implementation leads inevitably and automatically to improved operations has become something of a universal paradigm in the corporate world. With the projected growth of the ERP market at 66.7 billion dollars by 2003 from 16.7 billion dollars in 1998, most Fortune 500 companies have already adopted ERP systems and many midsize companies are planning ERP implementations. Clearly, ERP systems have significant implications for all functional areas of a company. From an operations manager's perspective, if implemented successfully and fully comprehended by managers, such systems can go a long way to help operations managers in decision-making process. As seen in the Intoduction, Escalle and Cotteleer (1999) provided a hypothetical but excellent example of the capabilities of a successfully implemented ERP system to demonstrate its usefulness to operations managers. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how ERP systems can be used as an enabling technology or tool to improve operations performance, i.e. to enable operations managers in their decision making process. More specifically, this paper provides an overview of enterprise resource planning systems, i.e. what it is and what its strategic relevance is, and demonstrates how it assists operations manager in developing consistent business/operations strategies and in making consistent set of decisions, such as product/process design, quality management and control, production planning and scheduling, and inventory management. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In the rest of this section, we discuss the evolution of ERP systems to show that operations planning and inventory management were at the root of its inception and briefly discuss main characteristics of various commercially available ERP systems. In Section 2, we suggest that ERP system as an enabling information technology should support company's business strategy and thereby, strategies of the functional areas in a consistent manner. In this section, we use a specific ERP system, i.e. SAP/R3 as an example to highlight how various modules can enhance operations decision-making process. In the third section, we discuss an example of how ERP system modules can be implemented to make operations decisions in an integrated manner and provide some insights on the selection of a specific ERP system. Finally, we conclude our paper with some discussion on the future of ERP systems by citing its role in integrating companies across the supply chain.

In today's knowledge economy, information technology is a driving force in organizational change. ERP systems along with other technological advances such as E-commerce are playing a major role in assisting a company's strategic plan. The global competition, along with shorter product lifecycles, ever-increasing market niches, and the pressure to react quickly to the changing external business environment has forced companies to make decisions in an integrated manner. One of the greatest benefits of ERP system such as SAP R/3 is the integration of processes, data and organizational elements, i.e. it unites all of a company's major business processes (from order processing to product distribution) within a single family of software modules. This tight integration makes simultaneously satisfying operational, financial, and managerial principles possible. ERP systems have potential to make a company stronger and successful but it also has the potentials to kill a company. Thus, in order to obtain benefits and avoid serious difficulties, companies need to solve the ERP implementation problems. In this paper, we have provided a broad overview of ERP system and then, focused primarily on its implications for operations function. However, this work should be extended to delineate its implications for other internal supply chain members (i.e. functional areas) as well as external supply chain members ( Tam et al., 2002). As shown in the paper, ERP systems have been used to improve internal operations and efficiencies. Today's dynamic business environment requires companies to internally monitor and make decisions in response to changes in the marketplace. To effectively compete in the international business world, companies must position themselves to quickly access both internal and external market information and make prudent business decisions. For example, Coca-Cola has extended its ERP system to its bottlers and has further plans to extend its system not only backward to suppliers but forward to major customers such as McDonalds and Wal-Mart. With this forward extension, Coca-Cola and its partners will be able to gather data from its customers on various trends in the industry, e.g. changes in tastes and preferences, sales data for improved forecasting and inventory management and to better serve their customers (Oliver, 1999).