Title: Linking simulation, critical success factors and enterprise resource planning in small and medium size enterprises

Authors: Sreejit Pillai; Alan Arokiam; Rajinderpal Bhatti

Addresses: Priorclave Ltd., 129-131 Nathan Way, West Thamesmead Business Park, London, SE28 0AB, UK ' Mechanical, Manufacturing and Design Engineering, School of Engineering, University of Greenwich, Medway Campus, Kent, ME4 4TB, UK ' Faculty of Engineering and Science, School of Engineering, University of Greenwich, Pembroke, Chatham Maritime, Kent, ME4 4TB, UK

Abstract: Since the mid-2000s enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendors have been actively developing and implementing scaled down, pre-configured low cost ERP versions to suit small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Further, ERP implementations are neither standard nor information technology (IT) projects. Despite the awareness of such information, up to 57% of ERP projects either fail to realise any benefit, run over-budget or time. Critical success factors (CSFs) are subjective and change as per ERP project and stages. Only a few publications explicitly focus on CSFs and dynamic interrelationships between CSFs in make-to-order (MTO) manufacturing SMEs. Additionally, these dynamic interrelationships cannot be visualised as a project is implemented. This paper, based on a 30-month ERP implementation project at a UK MTO SME presents a discrete event (DE) simulation modelling framework for studying relationships among CSFs using WITNESS software. The framework and concept are intended to improve the percentage of ERP projects realising their true benefits.

Keywords: enterprise resource planning; ERP; make-to-order; MTO; manufacturing SMEs; discrete event simulation; DES; critical success factors; CSFs; small and medium-sized enterprises; modelling.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISCM.2013.058337

International Journal of Information Systems and Change Management, 2013 Vol.6 No.3, pp.266 - 290

Received: 22 Feb 2013
Accepted: 07 Sep 2013
Published online: 05 Jul 2014 *

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