J. Michael Tarn

Exploring the rationales for ERP and SCM integration

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) and supply‐chain management (SCM) have been growing in popularity across various industries. New initiatives in resources planning, electronic commerce and extended supply chain drive the trend among corporations towards integrating strategic business applications. ERP systems assist enterprises in automating and integrating corporate cross‐functions such as inventory control, procurement, distribution, finance and project management. Through information sharing, SCM enables supply‐chain partners to work in close coordination to facilitate supplier‐customer interactions and minimize transaction cost. This research examines these two important concepts in terms of their evolution, functions and current development and further explores the rationales for their integration by analyzing the problems of ERP and presenting the solutions of SCM. This study is concluded with the imminent development of SCM and EPR systems and the industrial trend toward their integration.

The New Spectrum of the Cross-Enterprise Solution: The Integration of Supply Chain Management and Enterprise Resources Planning Systems

Supply chain management (SCM) is the process of optimizing a companys internal practices and improving the interaction with its suppliers and customers. The philosophy of SCM is to have the right product in the right place, at the right price, at the right time, and in the right condition. The major business value of an enterprise resources planning (ERP) system lies in its ability to integrate information across an organization and to model and automate its fundamental processes. ERP systems improve the efficiency of management decisions and operation plans and increase the flexibility with adjustments of functionality to react to changes in business needs. This research aims to compare SCR with ERP in terms of their evolution, application and functionality, investigate their relationship, and explore their potential system integration. This study is concluded with the future implications of SCM and EPR systems and the industrial trend toward their integration.

E‐fulfillment: the strategy and operational requirements

An e‐fulfillment system is designed to meet the high order volume and stringent customer service requirements of global business‐to‐consumer e‐commerce. The system converts the traditional warehouse into a multi‐channel e‐fulfillment center. In the e‐commerce environment, some of the toughest decisions must be made on little or no hard information. In this study, the nature of e‐business and the typical fulfillment process are discussed. The authors further examine the strategy and operational requirements for e‐fulfillment. This article is concluded with the implication of a successful e‐fulfillment system, a suggested design of an e‐fulfillment center, and the future research focuses.

An applied model for improving inventory management in ERP systems

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems provide functions to calculate safety stock (SS), make demand forecast and determine reorder point (ROP) for each item contained in the database based on the item’s demand history. Most ERP systems are ill‐equipped to deal with the demand of slow moving items such as spare parts. Based on data from a Fortune 500 company, presents the development and evaluation of a spare parts inventory control model. Compares the proposed model with the results achieved using the forecasting and inventory management modules of a popular ERP system. Tested with computer simulation, the proposed model significantly outperforms the commercial ERP model on both measures of service level and expected total annual cost.

Exploring the failure and success of DotComs

The Internet added another dimension to traditional commerce when online business became available. Because of the mushroom growth of online businesses in the late 1990s, DotCom bubbles began to burst after the initial euphoria of e‐commerce. Since mid‐2000, the mass failure of DotComs has had a significant impact on the e‐ecosystem. However, there were strong survivors and successful DotComs as well. Employing a comparative analysis, this study investigates the causes for DotCom failures and successes. The examination found that successful DotComs overcame the technical, operational and behavioral shortcomings of their failed counterparts and led the way in logistics, customer support, Web design, promotion and Internet security.

Linking ERP and SCM systems

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Supply Chain Management (SCM) systems have been growing in popularity across various segments of the electronic industry over the past few years. New initiatives in resources planning, electronic commerce and extended supply chain are fuelling the trend among corporations toward integrating strategic business applications. ERP systems assist enterprises in automating and integrating corporate cross-functions. SCM systems support information flow from various players in the supply side, reducing transaction cost and facilitating supplier-customer interactions. Given the popularity and importance of ERP and SCM systems, this research aims to examine and compare these two systems from the standpoint of organisational and technological implementation and explores the trend and opportunity of their system integration. Furthermore, the authors present and analyse two potential approaches to linking ERP and SCM systems, which indeed promote their integration. This article is concluded with the challenges and implications of the ERP and SCM system integration.

Improving network congestion: A RED-based FuzzyPID approach

This research proposes a new active queue management method (or FPID) to improve network congestion, which integrates the random early detection (RED) method and fuzzy proportional integral derivative (FuzzyPID) approach. Fuzzy theory applied together with PID helps control the buffer queue within the target. This article provides the literature and theoretical background of network congestion problems, active queue management methods, automatic control systems, and fuzzy controllers. Following the discussion of the proposed FPID method and the experimental design, a simulation test is conducted and analyzed in comparison to the existing popular active queue management methods. The results prove the superiority of the proposed method.

Exploring user acceptance of an e-hospital service

The web-based appointment system (WAS) is considered one of the major Internet services provided by e-hospitals. Because of the very high adoption rate of WAS in the public medical centers in Taiwan, this research investigates the current status of its implementation and examines the factors affecting the user acceptance of WAS by integrating the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) with the constructs of service quality. Further, this study proposes a research framework that delineates the user acceptance of WAS, which is verified via an empirical survey. This article is concluded with the managerial implications and suggestions.

Bridging the gap between missing and inconsistent values in eliciting preference from pairwise comparison matrices

Missing values and inconsistency of pairwise comparison matrices (PCM) in AHP are tackled with different methods in extant studies. In this article, we prove that connecting path method (CPM), which is a well-known approach of estimating missing judgments, also guarantees minimal geometric consistency index, and only involves elementary connecting paths by unraveling its connection with logarithmic least square method. The formal proofs suggest that CPM alone is sufficient to fix both missing judgments and inconsistency of PCM in AHP. Based on this well grounded merit, a procedure is proposed to improve consistency for incomplete PCM. The validity of the proposed procedure is illustrated by classical examples, and its advantages over other consistency improving approaches are also discussed in detail.

Exploring organizational expansion modes and their associated communication system requirements: consolidation and complementation

The expectation of firms following aggressive growth strategies is that firms expanding geographically will acquire extensive economic advantages unavailable to more conservative competitors. Growth-minded firms also believe that by integrating info-communication technology (ICT) within their regional infrastructures, distribution channels, and marketing approaches, they can achieve lower costs or enhanced differentiation within a broad scope of operations. Empirical evidence shows that many organizational expansions have been implemented utilizing two major expansion modes, consolidation and complementation. This research examines the modal properties of these approaches in terms of their configurational characteristics, economic rationales and managerial requirements. Viewed from a top-down perspective the modal properties further suggest the organizations management support system requirements. This study also identifies and explores the corresponding communication system requirements, especially for key dispersion-related communication configurations and systems. The desired practical effect of this research would be an increased awareness of and an incentive for commercial and industrial enterprises to include communication system requirements in their adopted expansion mode deliberations.