According to W. Edwards Deming, American companies require nothing less than a transformation of management style and of governmental relations with industry. In Out of the Crisis, originally published in 1982, Deming offers a theory of management based on his famous 14 Points for Management. Management's failure to plan for the future, he claims, brings about loss of market, which brings about loss of jobs. Management must be judged not only by the quarterly dividend, but by innovative plans to stay in business, protect investment, ensure future dividends, and provide more jobs through improved product and service. In simple, direct language, he explains the principles of management transformation and how to apply them.

Out of the Crisis

Economic Control of Quality of Manufactured Product.

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems have emerged as the core of successful information management and the enterprise backbone of organizations. The difficulties of ERP implementations have been widely cited in the literature but research on the critical factors for initial and ongoing ERP implementation success is rare and fragmented. Through a comprehensive review of the literature, 11 factors were found to be critical to ERP implementation success – ERP teamwork and composition; change management program and culture; top management support; business plan and vision; business process reengineering with minimum customization; project management; monitoring and evaluation of performance; effective communication; software development, testing and troubleshooting; project champion; appropriate business and IT legacy systems. The classification of these factors into the respective phases (chartering, project, shakedown, onward and upward) in Markus and Tanis’ ERP life cycle model is presented and the importance of each factor is discussed.

Critical factors for successful implementation of enterprise systems

Enterprise resource planning: A taxonomy of critical factors

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) system solutions are currently in high demand by both manufacturing and service organisations because they provide a tightly integrated solution to an organisation's information system needs. During the last decade, ERP systems have received a significant amount of attention from researchers and practitioners from a variety of functional disciplines. In this paper, a comprehensive review of the research literature (1990‐2003) concerning ERP systems is presented. The literature is further classified and the major outcomes of each study are addressed and analysed. Following a comprehensive review of the literature, proposals for future research are formulated to identify topics where fruitful opportunities exist.

Enterprise resource planning: An integrative review

B usiness information systems can be either designed as custom applications or purchased as off-the-shelf standard solutions. The development of custom applications is generally expensive and is often plagued by uncertainties, such as the selection of appropriate development tools, the duration of the development cycle, or the difficulties involved in assessing costs. Thus, empirical surveys have shown that between half to two-thirds of information systems projects fail [3]. The current tendency to shift from individual development to standardized, prepackaged software solutions is therefore not surprising. Yet, standardized ERP systems such as SAP R/3, Oracle Applications, and PeopleSoft have disadvantages, too. Huge storage needs, networking requirements, and training overheads are frequently mentioned ERP problems. However, the scale of Business Process Reengineering (BPR) and customization tasks involved in the software implementation process are the major reasons for ERP dissatisfaction [1]. Baan, Peoplesoft, as well as SAP calculate that customers spend between three and seven times more money on ERP implementation and associated services compared to the purchase of the software license. Our own experiences validate that the ratio between ERP implementation efforts and software purchase is approximately 5 to 1. With hardware and software costs rapidly decreasing, that ratio becomes even worse. This high ratio is due to the fact that ERP systems are more or less easy to install, yet users must also determine which goals (strategies) they wish to reach with the system, how the functionality of the system can achieve this, and how to customize, configure, and technically implement the package. If one realizes that SAP’s R/3 solution comprises more than 5,000 different parameters, the complexity of the implementation process will be evident. Inevitably, customization and implementation of ERP systems became an industry on its own. But particularly smalland medium-sized enterprises are not able to pay consultants millions of dollars for ERP implementation. Hence, modeling methods, architectures, and tools have become increasingly popular because they can help to reduce the cost of software implementation and at the same time increase user acceptance of ERP software solutions. Several modeling approaches are possible:

Enterprise resource planning: making ERP a success

Making ERP a Success.

In den meisten Unternehmen werden agile und klassische Ansatze des Projektmanagements als gegensatzliche Pole verstanden. Zumindest in Bezug auf das einzelne Projekt herrscht in der Praxis eine Entweder-oder-Mentalitat vor. In diesem Beitrag wird der These nachgegangen, dass jedoch gerade in der gezielten Kombination von klassischen und agilen Methoden ein besonderes Effektivitatspotenzial liegt. Zur Untersuchung dieser These wurde ein Experiment auf der Basis des sogenannten »Ballpoint Game« durchgefuhrt. Die Ergebnisse bestatigen die These: Weder der agile noch der klassische Ansatz ist dem anderen per se uberlegen, aus dem Mix der beiden Ansatze ergeben sich jedoch Vorteile.

Hybrides Projektmanagement — agile und klassische Vorgehensmodelle im Zusammenspiel

Der Einsatz von Informationstechnologie (IT) verandert Unternehmungen. In nunmehr zwanzig Jahren Saarbrucker Arbeitstagung wurden zahlreiche Entwicklungen von IT und ihre Auswirkungen auf die unterschiedlichen Unternehmungsbereiche diskutiert. Beispielsweise stand zu Beginn der Reihe die Nutzung von Datenbanktechnologien zur Gestaltung integrierter Kostenrechnungs-und Finanzplanungssysteme im Mittelpunkt. Die zehnte Arbeitstagung thematisierte Wissensbasierte Systeme fur das Controlling sowie die Veranderung der Produktion durch elektronische Leitstande und im vergangenen Jahr galt das Hauptaugenmerk der technischen und organisatorischen Vernetzung von Unternehmungen.

Frank Habermann

Papers

Enterprise resource planning: making ERP a success

Making ERP a Success.

Hybrides Projektmanagement — agile und klassische Vorgehensmodelle im Zusammenspiel

Electronic Business und Knowledge Management — Neue Dimensionen für den Unternehmungserfolg

Management von Geschäftsprozesswissen : IT-basierte Systeme und Architektur