Gilbert Babin

Business Simulation Training in Information Technology Education: Guidelines for New Approaches in IT Training.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are commercial software packages that enable the integration of transactions-oriented data and business processes throughout an organization. Most of the world’s largest organizations have already adopted an ERP system, and many mid-size or-ganizations are turning to them as well. The implementation of an ERP system presents some ma-jor training challenges. Organizations devote significant portions of their implementation budgets to training and organizational change management interventions. Industry experts recommend that up to 20% of an implementation budget be devoted to adequately preparing managers and users. Studies also show a low return on investment for this type of training as it makes it difficult for knowledge workers to teach how to transfer what is learned in training to real-life jobs. Inade-quate and ineffective training has the potential to seriously limit value realization. In that context, this paper presents ERPsim, a business simulation training approach developed at HEC Montreal in which the only interface between participants and the game is a real-life enterprise system (SAP). ERPsim recreates a realistic business environment that allows learners to develop IT com-petencies and skills in a setting that reflects the true complexity of the business world. This simu-lation approach is now used in over 100 universities and a dozen Fortune 1000 organizations. Yet, our experience shows that trainers need to approach simulation game training with a differ-ent attitude. This paper addresses the challenges faced by IT trainers in adapt-ing to this innovative training approach. Based on our many training experiences, this paper provides instructors with guidelines to create a learning environ-

Metadatabase Modeling for Enterprise Information Integration

An underpinning to the notion of computer-integrated enterprises is information integration; that is, the integration of information resources and decision logic across the enterprise to achiete functional synergies. This concept requires certain basic extensions to two previously separate paradigms: information modeling and metadata management. In particular, both paradigms mus consider not only data resources but also contextual knowledge in a unified way; furthermore, they have to converge as a single, integrated method rather than belonging to two distinct stages of a life cycle. Toward this end, a modeling system is developed based on the two-stage entity relationship (TSER) approach [3, 4, 5, 7] and the metadatabase method [5, 6, 8].This paper presents the metadatabase goals and the metadata modeling system, focusing on its basic concepts, design, and current implementation. In addition, the prototype environmental of the metadatabase that this system creates is illustrated through some examples taken from a computer-integrated manufacturing case.

Management Technologies for E-Commerce and E-Business Applications

Keynote Speakers.- More Research Is Indeed Needed in E-commerce Where Were Business Academicians When We Needed Them?.- Cool to Critical: Managing Web Services Now.- Panel Session.- Enforcing QoS: Myth or Reality?.- Managing Quality of Service.- Modeling of Service-Level Agreements for Composed Services.- The Architecture of NG-MON: A Passive Network Monitoring System for High-Speed IP Networks1.- Automated SLA Monitoring for Web Services.- Optimizing Quality of Service Using Fuzzy Control.- Measuring Qualit of Service.- Interaction Translation Methods for XML/SNMP Gateway.- Measuring Application Response Times with the CIM Metrics Model.- Quality Aspects in IT Service Management.- Service Architectures.- Replication and Notification Management in a Knowledge Delivery Network.- Delivering Service Adaptation with 3G Technology.- Remote Code Browsing, a Network Based Computation Utility.- Policy and Process.- Performance Study of COPS over TLS and IPsec Secure Session.- A Criteria Catalog Based Methodology for Analyzing Service Management Processes.- A Comparative Study of Policy Specification Languages for Secure Distributed Applications.- Fault Analysis.- Two Dimensional Time-Series for Anomaly Detection and Regulation in Adaptive Systems.- A Hot-Failover State Machine for Gateway Services and Its Application to a Linux Firewall.- Distributed Fault Localization in Hierarchically Routed Networks.

Comparing Objective Measures and Perceptions of Cognitive Learning in an ERP Simulation Game: A Research Note

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems have had a significant impact on business organizations. These large systems offer opportunities for companies regarding the integration and functionality of information technology systems; in effect, companies can realize a competitive advantage that is necessary in today’s global companies. However, effective training for the incorporation and use of these large-scale systems is difficult and challenging; improved strategies for effective training include the use of business simulations. The question of the effectiveness of training remains—“How do we measure learning?”. In a recent Simulation & Gaming article “Business Simulations and Cognitive Learning”, Anderson and Lawton (2009) focus on research associated with the assessment of cognitive learning in business simulations. They indicate that little progress has occurred in objectively assessing cognitive learning in simulations and call for research that might help determine whether simulations accomplish what they purport to achieve in terms of participant learning. In this research note, objective measures of learning are presented. The results of objective measures of learning are compared with those of self-assessed perceptions of learning in the context of an ERP business simulation game. Based on the comparisons of learning measures, self-assessed measure results were not different from those of objective measures; moreover, learning did occur.

Enterprise Collaboration: On-Demand Information Exchange Using Enterprise Databases, Wireless Sensor Networks, and RFID Systems

New extended enterprise models such as supply chain integration and demand chain management require a new method of on-demand information exchange that extends the traditional results of a global database query. The new requirements stem from, first, the fact that the information exchange involves large numbers of enterprise databases that belong to a large number of independent organizations, and second, these databases are increasingly overlapping with real-time data sources such as wireless sensor networks and radio-frequency identification (RFID) systems. One example is the industrial push to install RFID- augmented systems to integrate enterprise information along the life cycle of a product. The new effort demands openness and scalability, and leads to a new paradigm of collaboration using all these data sources. The collaboration requires a metadata technology (for reconciling different data semantics) that works on thin computing environments (e.g., emerging sensor nodes and RFID chips) as well as on traditional databases. It also needs a new extended global query model that supports participants to offer/publish information as they see fit, not just request/subscribe what they want. This paper develops new results toward meeting these requirements.

Two-level communication protocol for a Web operating system (WOS/sup TM/)

The World Wide Web consists not only of informational, but also computational resources. However these resources, especially computational ones are underutilized. One characteristic of the Web is its ever changing structure; for instance, nodes are dynamically added and removed. This makes it difficult, if not impossible, to draw a complete and accurate picture of available resources. We consider the Web as a versioned system: resources, services and protocols are versioned. This paper presents a two-level protocol within this framework. The first protocol, the WOS Request Protocol (WOSRP), allows to select an appropriate version of a server. The second protocol, the WOS Protocol (WOSP), allows for locating and using these distributed (informational and computational) resources. We show how the latter protocol provides an efficient fault-tolerant resource search mechanism.

Authentic OM problem solving in an ERP context

Purpose – It is argued that problem‐based learning (PBL) is a valuable approach to teaching operations management, as it allows learners to apply their knowledge and skills in an environment that is close to real‐life. In fact, many simulations currently exist in the teaching of operations management. However, these simulations lack a connection to real‐life, as they are typically turn‐based and do not use real‐life IT support. The current paper seeks to address this issue by presenting an innovative pedagogical approach designed to provide learners with an authentic problem‐solving experience in operations management within an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.Design/methodology/approach – The paper proposes a simulation game called ERPsim whereby students must operate an enterprise in a simulated economic environment using in real time a real‐life ERP system, namely SAP. Based on a survey with instructors, it assesses the extent to which this proposed simulation is aligned with the five characte...

EXEM: Efficient XML data exchange management for mobile applications

In the past decade, the number of mobile devices has increased significantly. These devices are in turn showing more computational capabilities. It is therefore possible to envision a near future where client applications may be deployed on these devices. There are, however, constraints that hinder this deployment, especially the limited communication bandwidth and storage space available. This paper describes the Efficient XML Data Exchange Manager (EXEM) that combines context-dependent lossy and lossless compression mechanisms used to support lightweight exchange of objects in XML format between server and client applications. The lossy compression mechanism reduces the size of XML messages by using known information about the application. The lossless compression mechanism decouples data and metadata (compression dictionary) content. We illustrate the use of EXEM with a prototype implementation of the lossless compression mechanism that shows the optimization of the available resources on the server and the mobile client. These experimental results demonstrate the efficiency of the EXEM approach for XML data exchange in the context of mobile application development.

Improvements to the Or-opt heuristic for the symmetric travelling salesman problem

Several variants and generalizations of the Or-opt heuristic for the Symmetric Travelling Salesman Problem are developed and compared on random and planar instances. Some of the proposed algorithms are shown to significantly improve upon the standard 2-opt and Or-opt heuristics.

Experimenting with Gnutella Communities

Computer networks or distributed systems in general may be regarded as communities where the individual components, be they entire systems, application software or users, interact in a shared environment. Such communities dynamically evolve with components or nodes joining and leaving the system. Their own individual activities affect the communitys behavior and vice versa. This paper discusses various practical experiments undertaken to investigate the behavior of a real system, the Gnutella network, which represents such a community. Gnutella is a distributed Peer-to-Peer data-sharing system without any central control. It turns out that most interactions between nodes do not last long and much of their activity is devoted to finding appropriate partners in the network. The experimental results presented have been obtained from a Java implementation of Gnutella running in the open Internet environment, and thus in unknown and quickly changing network structures heavily depending on chance.