Abderrahman El Mhamedi

Risk Prediction in ERP Projects: Classification of Reengineered Business Processes

Companies have been implementing ERPs for almost ten years now and the same implementation problems continue to occur. More and more, ERP projects technological challenges are accompanied by critical dimensions related to the management of the transformational effects of these projects on the organization. Indeed, risk management in this kind of project is not very structured and misses specific methods. In this article, we propose a structured methodology for risk management particularly in the BPR (Business Process Reengineering) sub-project of ERP implementation. The final aim of our work is to decease appreciably resistance to organizational change which poses the greatest obstacle to business process reengineering efforts. We propose to adapt OSR (Optimal Set Reduction), a risk management method used in software development, for the risk management in ERP implementation. We address specially the risk related to the changes in enterprise processes in the ERP project. To achieve this objective we propose to define business process change metrics starting from business process complexity metrics that exist in the literature.

Towards an Extended Interoperability Systemic Approach for Dynamic Manufacturing Networks: Role and Assessment of PLMStandards

This paper aims at illustrating some limitations of the systemic approach when willing to ensure the interoperability of PLM solutions within a Dynamic Manufacturing Network (DMN), based on e-Business PLM standards and their implementations, being industrial processes, methods, applications or Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) solutions. Indeed, addressing interoperability challenges in such a complex digital business eco-system calls for a holistic approach based on the “system” paradigm. Setting this way, a part of our goal is to underline the limits and drawbacks of such an approach as interoperability brakes and to derive the issues that must be addressed in terms of research in order to remove them. This paper introduces a new approach in order to set up a test bed environment for PLM standards. The required and proposed approach considers a PLM standard not only as a technical solution, but above all as a strategic solution for which it is mandatory to support and enhance discussions between enterprise, product/system, processes, ICT architects and designers. The proposed approach - for analyzing and assessing the relevancy of PLM standards regarding their usage in specific business contexts - will be illustrated with a multi-layer modeling language. This language is used to model standards-based business collaboration scenarios and to model the test bed environment that will enable the execution/simulation of this scenario and the assessment of related standards implementations regarding the business needs of the scenario. The addressed case study is based on a data exchange scenario between a customer production order scheduler and a supplier production order executer using the ISA 95 standard. From this example, the interoperability issues related to DMN system of systems will be identified, for which accurate test based methods will be defined in future work.

PLM Standards Modelling for Enterprise Interoperability: A Manufacturing Case Study for ERP and MES Systems Integration Based on ISA-95

Today Enterprise Interoperability is considered as a key factor of successful collaboration. It was identified as a critical need that has to be taken into account all along the lifecycle of a manufactured product. To deal with this problem and to reduce complexity of the different systems of interest used when different companies have to collaborate together, Enterprise Architecture (EA) and Enterprise Modelling (EM) are considered as solutions to facilitate Enterprise Interoperability. Dealing with interoperability issues in the context of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), we have to mention the importance of product data and process standards implementation as interoperability enablers. In order to address the complexity of PLM standards, we propose to apply a model-driven methodology for modelling these standards and the related collaboration scenarios. This approach intends to make standards more comprehensive and to better manage standards evolutions, but also to instantiate and re-use these “generic” standards models to specify specific business collaboration scenarios. This proposal aims also to facilitate the exchange, testing and simulation of standards implementations. In this paper, the focus is on the ISA 95 standard for manufacturing-PLM integration, with an exchange scenario between Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Manufacturing Execution System (MES) based on ISA 95 standard.

Post-production analysis approach for drone delivery fleet

This paper treats a drone delivery parcels problematic in an urban area. The civil application of drone has been developed during these last decades especially drone delivery applications. In this paper, we focus on drone delivery application in the urban area for last-mile parcel delivery. The new issue is not only the drone design but also the logistics support of a massive fleet of drones with a mission to deliver parcels in a dense urban area. We hereby treat problematic by focusing on Logistics Support System. In this context, the commercialized drone is a considered as a system on the shelf. we propose a Post-Production Logistics Support Analysis to cover the exploitation phase of a drone delivery operator.

Logistics Support Approach for Drone Delivery Fleet

This paper treats a drone delivery parcel’s problem in an urban area. Drone delivery has emerged as a potential way in the immediate future to deliver parcels in the urban area, especially in last-mile delivery. This new configuration of parcel delivery highlights the improvement of the application of Unmanned Aircraft Vehicles in the civil use. The future challenge underlying this application is not so much the design of drones for parcel delivery, but the logistics support of a massive fleet of drones with a mission to deliver at least hundreds of parcels a day in a dense urban area. We hereby treat this issue by focusing on Logistics Support System. In this paper, we propose a Post-Production Logistics Support Analysis to cover the exploitation phase of a drone delivery operator.

Dynamic Manufacturing Network, PLM Hub and Business Standards Testbed

Current trends in manufacturing enterprises dealing with complex systems are usage of System Engineering, Product Life Cycle management and systematic utilization of computer aided solutions for all engineering or management activities. In such a context, sustainable and agile infrastructure for emerging digital ecosystems is required, based on open eBusiness PLM standards supporting exchange, sharing and long term archiving of digital models describing behavioural products and implied organizations. This paper will present some new ways to deal with interoperability in such a context, based on Dynamic Manufacturing Networks, constituted by a network of partner enterprises, of enterprise applications involved in the cross-organizational collaboration processes and of the underlying ICT systems. The approach will consist in qualifying such a network to support a portfolio of cross organizational processes supported by a PLM Hub, in particular in terms of interoperabilty and in terms of security, and to map it with available capabilities used by the actual collaboration participants. Then it will be possible to define the efforts required by the partners in order to be able to participate to a given kind of collaboration, making then it possible to participate in any other future collaboration where the partner will play the same role. Doing so, interoperabilty can be established in a continuous and smooth way, allowing all the digital business ecosystem community to build together their interoperability maturity. This approach is completed by the ellaboration of an associated testbed for eBusiness PLM standards allowing the community to accelerate development of required standards as well as their implementation, being by software product solutions or by industrial processes and methods. The principles will be exposed, as well as illustrations coming from research projects such as IMAGINE or IRT-SystemX SIP projects.

Selecting configuration of reverse logistics network using sustainability indicators

The network of the reverse logistics (RL) aims to treat and re-inject into the supply chain all that can be valorized from products which are defective, at the end of life, at the end of warranty, at high obsolescence level, etc. The design of that network must take into account many things like the uncertainty about the expected volumes of these products, the forecast of consumer needs customers, producers returns projections, recycling systems, etc. In general, products are not always accompanied with complete data. Those data are often imprecise, hypothetical, inconsistent ... Our literature review is interested mainly in economic viability of an RL organization for a family of products in the context of uncertainty. It shows that almost all research papers do not take into account the incompleteness of the data, do not capitalize on the practices and the historical data of the network and, then, do not consider any indicator of sustainable development (SD). In this paper, we develop a model to select the best reverse logistic network under uncertainty of products returns. This model uses mathematic model and Bayesian network to detect the distribution of used product, integrated in Arena Software to simulate different configurations.

A novel approach for selecting green teams: the case of surgical teams

One of the important issues of human resources management in healthcare system is to select green teams aiming at improving environmental management practices. This paper proposes a new general model for green team selection integrating sustainability criteria. The aim is to use case-based reasoning (CBR) systems with analytic hierarchy process (AHP) in team selection process. We test the efficiency of the model using medical domains of different complexities and demonstrate how this approach can facilitate intelligent decision support by retrieving the best green team for each case that satisfies the most decision maker preferences.

Proactive Management of Business Change

This paper addresses enterprise performance problems that can occur after Business Process Reengineering (BPR) project as consequence of business change. The general idea is to lean a Bayesian network from past BPR projects and use this model for prediction in future restructured processes. The role of Bayesian network will be to measure influence of business process structural changes, quantified by structural change metrics, and the increasing or decreasing of process performance, quantified by operational variation metrics. The paper’s focus is interoperable structural change metrics definition using process ontology, and operational variation metrics definition. Bayesian prediction model learning, application and result interpretation are discussed in (CAMRA, et al., 2007). The method we propose is for use for the validation of enterprise restructuration, more precisely in the validation of business processes restructuration’s.