ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks: a literature review

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation is a complex and vibrant process, one that involves a combination of technological and organizational interactions. Often an ERP implementation project is the single largest IT project that an organization has ever launched and requires a mutual fit of system and organization. Also the concept of an ERP implementation supporting business processes across many different departments is not a generic, rigid and uniform concept and depends on variety of factors. As a result, the issues addressing the ERP implementation process have been one of the major concerns in industry. Therefore ERP implementation receives attention from practitioners and scholars and both, business as well as academic literature is abundant and not always very conclusive or coherent. However, research on ERP systems so far has been mainly focused on diffusion, use and impact issues. Less attention has been given to the methods used during the configuration and the implementation of ERP systems, even though they are commonly used in practice, they still remain largely unexplored and undocumented in Information Systems research. So, the academic relevance of this research is the contribution to the existing body of scientific knowledge. An annotated brief literature review is done in order to evaluate the current state of the existing academic literature. The purpose is to present a systematic overview of relevant ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks as a desire for achieving a better taxonomy of ERP implementation methodologies. This paper is useful to researchers who are interested in ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Results will serve as an input for a classification of the existing ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Also, this paper aims also at the professional ERP community involved in the process of ERP implementation by promoting a better understanding of ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks, its variety and history

Achieving agility and quality in product development -an empirical study of hardware startups

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Innovation and the Evolution of Market Structure for Internet Access in the United States

How and why did the U.S. commercial Internet access market structure evolve during its first decade? Commercial Internet access market structure arose from a propitious combination of inherited market structures from communications and computing, where a variety of firms already flourished and entrepreneurial norms prevailed. This setting nurtured innovative behavior across such key features as pricing, operational practices, and geographic coverage. Inherited regulatory decisions in communications markets had a nurturing effect on innovative activity. On-going regulatory decisions also shaped the market’s evolution, sometimes nurturing innovation and sometimes not. This narrative and analysis informs conjectures about several unique features of U.S. market structure and innovative behavior. It also informs policy debates today about the role of regulation in nurturing or discouraging innovation behavior.

Business Case and Technology Analysis for 5G Low Latency Applications

A large number of new consumer and industrial applications are likely to change the classic operator's business models and provide a wide range of new markets to enter. This article analyses the most relevant 5G use cases that require ultra-low latency, from both technical and business perspectives. Low latency services pose challenging requirements to the network, and to fulfill them operators need to invest in costly changes in their network. In this sense, it is not clear whether such investments are going to be amortized with these new business models. In light of this, specific applications and requirements are described and the potential market benefits for operators are analysed. Conclusions show that operators have clear opportunities to add value and position themselves strongly with the increasing number of services to be provided by 5G.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figure

Exploring `Designer Context' in Engineering Design: The Relationship Between Self, Environment, and Design Methods

Engineering design methods support engineers’ decision-making throughout a design process in order to improve design outcomes. The selection and implementation of suitable design methods are therefore critical to project success. Prior engineering design research has focused on designers' professional experiences or the problem context for guiding method choices. Perhaps due to disciplinary norms of objectivity, individual characteristics outside of an engineer's professional expertise are not seen as influential on design outcomes. In contrast, theories from other design disciplines define aspects of a designer's experience outside of their professional self as central to design practice. This dissertation seeks to reconcile these two paradigms by exploring whether `designer context' factors, that are often not discussed in engineering design but are found in other design fields (i.e. - organizational culture, gender, race) can impact design outcomes via method selection and implementation. Results from practitioner interviews on designer context and prototyping methods, as well as an empirical study of a novel design method, suggest that a broad range of designer context factors can influence design method selection and implementation, ultimately impacting the efficiency and efficacy of a design process. Therefore, if engineering designers were to consider their holistic designer context and its influence on their work, as occurs in other design fields, better engineering outcomes could be achieved. An exploratory study consisting of qualitative interviews formalized designer context and illustrated how these contextual factors impacted methods used by practitioners in the medical device industry. This study provides an initial foundation of designer context factors for exploration in future research and practice. These factors were categorized into the Design Environment, or the external factors surrounding a designer when they are designing, and the Designer's Self, or the internal factors related to a designer. Interviews with design practitioners from small-to-medium sized enterprises in Rwanda and Kenya revealed specific resource constraints impacting the implementation of prototyping methods. Many of the identified constraints were related to the practitioners’ context. Limited access to quality materials or fabricators, often due to difficulties navigating a decentralized market, added time and cost to the process. Practitioners reported trying to develop simple, functional, and physical prototypes with increasing fidelity through a highly iterative process. However, these constraints negatively impacted the chosen prototyping method, suggesting that alternative methods could be beneficial. In an empirical study, our team proposed and implemented a new method for considering multiple stakeholder preferences, the Stakeholder Agreement Metric (SAM) framework, to support the design of a hand tool to reduce injuries for informal electronic-waste (e-waste) recyclers in rural Thailand. This method was compared to the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), an existing method that supports similar decisions. Results showed that the SAM framework outperformed AHP in this informal setting due to the failed completion of AHP by participants. The study highlights how designer context not only influenced the implementation of design methods but also their development. This dissertation expands the boundaries of what factors should be considered influential on design processes and their outcomes. Across all three studies, designer context was shown to influence method selection and implementation. The findings suggest that contextual factors affect design methods in practice and should be included in future research to enable the selection and implementation of more suitable and effective design methods.PHDMechanical EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/163100/1/suzchou_1.pd

Selection of Statistical Software for Solving Big Data Problems for Teaching

The need for analysts with expertise in big data software is becoming more apparent in 4 today’s society. Unfortunately, the demand for these analysts far exceeds the number 5 available. A potential way to combat this shortage is to identify the software sought by 6 employers and to align this with the software taught by universities. This paper will 7 examine multiple data analysis software – Excel add-ins, SPSS, SAS, Minitab, and R – and 8 it will outline the cost, training, statistical methods/tests/uses, and specific uses within 9 industry for each of these software. It will further explain implications for universities and 10 students (PDF

Rapid manufacturing as a tool for agile manufacturing: applications and implementation perspectives

Manufacturing engineers and technologists around the globe are already well familiar with manufacturing methodologies and systems developments in the last part of the twentieth century. Many are probably also familiar with the current state of Rapid Prototyping (RP) technologies, especially in the areas of concept model making and prototype development. They may not however, be so familiar with the more recent developments of these technologies towards Rapid Manufacturing (RM) and the directions which the applications of RM technologies are taking for agile manufacturing purposes in particular. This paper critically reviews the various technologies currently available, outlines development trends in RM, discusses the approach, application and implementation perspectives by which these RM technologies are applied for increasing agility and responsiveness in manufacturing. Furthermore, the paper describes two case study examples to further illustrate the application scenarios in agile manufacturing before concluding remarks