Erp and Manufacturing Essay example

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IMDS 111,1

Implementation of ERP of the Australian manufacturing companies
Maruf Hasan and Nga T. Trinh
School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

132
Received 24 May 2010 Revised 14 July 2010 Accepted 24 July 2010

Felix T.S. Chan
Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong

Hing Kai Chan
Norwich Business School, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK, and

Sai Ho Chung
Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the reasons for implementing enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems in Australia and the issues encountered during the course of implementation. Design/methodology/approach – A questionnaire survey is conducted, research frame is selected from the Australian manufacturing sector and a final list of 350 Australian manufacturing companies was prepared from which 79 responses were received, representing a response rate of 23 per cent. Findings – The paper finds that the planned and actual use of ERP systems is pervasive in the Australian manufacturing sector, with both small and large companies implementing or planning to implement an ERP system. It was also revealed that ERP system implementation benefits are concentrated more in quickly providing high-quality information within firm. Research limitations/implications – Respondents are limited to Australian companies, and results may be regional in nature. Further study is suggested to benchmark the result of this research to other countries. Originality/value – Provide insights on ERP implementation at least to the Australian companies and hopefully to companies in other countries. Keywords Supply chain management, Manufacturing resource planning, Communication technologies, Australia Paper type Research paper

Industrial Management & Data Systems Vol. 111 No. 1, 2011 pp. 132-145 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0263-5577 DOI 10.1108/02635571111099767

1. Introduction Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is based on the concept of identifying and implementing the set of best practices, procedures and tools that different functions of
The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers who provide the authors with insightful and constructive comments, which have helped improve the quality of this paper.

a company can utilise to accomplish total organisational excellence through integration. Today’s global business environments are characterised by numerous competitive pressures and sophisticated customers demanding speedy solutions and different supply chain strategies (Davenport, 2000; Chan and Chan, 2005a). Understanding and improving business processes is a cornerstone of success in these fast-changing environments. To alter how they conduct business, companies around the world are taking full advantage of a variety of packaged information technology (IT) systems (Klaus et al., 2000). In the past few years, hundreds of manufacturing companies worldwide have embraced packaged ERP systems as a basis for business process management integration across business functions (Mabert et al., 2000). ERP is probably the most important IT-enabled innovations in the last decade (Beatty and Williams, 2006). ERP software packages enable companies to integrate business processes across organisational functions and locations and hence facilitate such management (Soh et al., 2000). ERP attempts to integrate as many business functions and applications as possible. The technologies are developed to address the fragmentation of information across an organisation’s business and to intra- and inter-enterprise information (Sharif et al., 2005). ERP can also be an enabler to allow web-based integration for supply chain management