Lyes Kermad

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.

Digital factory system for dynamic manufacturing network supporting networked collaborative product development

During the last years, important research investments have been made by Airbus Group Innovations for the establishment of sustainable Product and Process data interoperability based on open standards. Driven successively by concurrent engineering, collaborative product design in the virtual enterprise or digital behavorial aircraft, it was capitalize through the establishment of a federative interoperability framework. Driven by factory of the future-related research, the dynamic manufacturing network (DMN) concept enriched the framework, which aims at providing agile infrastructure for networked collaborative product development. For such networks, protocols based on open eBusiness product lifecycle management (PLM) standards for exchange and sharing of product and process data between the implied organizations, their processes and the technical enteprise applications supporting these processes are needed This paper presents a new way of combining model-based enterprise platform engineering, model-driven architecture, and system engineering in order to adress the establishment of a sustainable interoperability within DMN. Based on relevant litterature interoperability issues, this paper describes the new approach, which relies on the association of effective existing technologies coupled with research results on the fields of model-driven engineering (MDE), enterprise interoperability, system engineering and PLM. The new approach relies on the concept of digital factory system (DFS) coupled with DMN in order to produce sustainable and agile collaborative infrastructure for manufacturing digital ebusiness ecosystem. The approach is then illustrated through use case coming from the IMAGINE project and an outline is provided on how it will be used and developed further for the assessment of PLM standards and their implementation in the Standard Interoperability PLM project at IRT-Systemx.

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.

Model Based Enterprise Modeling for Testing PLM Interoperability in Dynamic Manufacturing Network

When willing to prepare and to build operational Product Life cycle Management interoperability within a Dynamic Manufacturing Network (DMN) in a mature digital business ecosystem such as Aeronautic, Space and Defense, the approaches proposed by the Enterprise Application Interoperability are insufficient when willing to address the existing interoperability brakes Some of these brakes have been addressed in project such as IMAGINE and SIP@SystemX, allowing to experiment innovative way of using standards based enterprise modeling and also to identify some additional gaps for applying model base enterprise modeling to PLM interoperability within a DMN. After defining the business and the scientific contexts, the paper describes this new approach which consists in federating the usage of several PLM, Business, Information and ICT standard through the usage of an enterprise modeling standardized language, ArchiMate, and associated modeling tool Archi created using ArchiMate as an EMF DSL. The defined methodology is based on producing a set of DMN blueprints and associated templates. Then, through model to model transformation, other more detailed models using more specialized languages are created and used for software component generation and deployment enterprise hub platform based on standards. Using the methodology, the associated framework and the developed resulting from our research activity, we are now able to prepare and build interoperability within a DMN. Ability of preserving investment performed with the legacy and reducing risks associated to future evolution was demonstrated through IMAGINE Aeronautic Lab experimentation within SIP. Such experimentation also highlighted some issues related to model based engineering in such a context, and allowed identifying needs for new extensions of the federative PLM interoperability framework for Collaborative Networked Product Development initiated during the ATHENA project. It will be addressed in future work.

Working team composition in ERP implementation project

Information systems like ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) allow companies to manage and process their data in a simpler and faster way. They help to improve their operational performance and enhance their competitiveness. However the implementation of ERP is complex, risky and needs to realize the hierarchical and functional reorganization of the existing enterprise structure. To achieve implementation, we emphasize the necessity of proposing a quality management approach in implementing ERP. This paper focuses on the composition of competent working teams in order to achieve the functional reorganization effectively. An optimization model is presented and illustrated through an industrial case study concerning company operating in the power sector. The proposed solutions helped the company to change its processes and structure to be adaptable with the ERP model.

Decision making linked to the outsourcing risks

The examination of outsourcing – the purchase of goods or services that were previously provided internally (Lacity and Hirschheim, 1993a) – has been an investigation domain for several years. When we consider the potential gains that can be achieved through outsourcing, most of academic discussions have addressed the questions of ‘why’, ‘what’ and ‘how’ to outsource. This research focuses on ‘what are the risks of outsourcing?’. In fact, certain decisions of outsourcing involve unforeseen risks. So, our goal in this research consists in proposing modes and steps of adaptation to the risks related to the strategies of outsourcing and adapting those within a sample of Tunisian outsourced companies. The suggested assistance to these firms consists in developing an interactive system of decision-making aid which allows them to diminish the effect of risk on success of the strategy.

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.

New approach for building multidisciplinary teams: case of surgical teams

One of the problems in human resources management in healthcare systems is the scouting or building of new team members to enhance the quality of healthcare. This paper proposes a new general model for multidisciplinary team building. The proposed model takes professional’s preferences into account when a team building process is required for any type of project. We test the effectiveness of the model using medical domains of different complexities and describe some practical experiences of using the model in the surgical team building process.

Raissy Changing Project: A case study of implementing ERP

Information systems like ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) allow companies to manage and process their data in a simpler and faster way. They help to improve their operational performance and enhance their competitiveness. However the implementation of ERP is complex, risky and needs to realize the hierarchical and functional reorganization of the existing enterprise structure. To achieve implementation, we emphasize the necessity of proposing a quality management approach in implementing ERP. In order to support ERP-driven projects, the application of the proposed approach is demonstrated in RCP (Raissy Changing Project), a case study concerning a Saudi Arabian Company operating in the Power sector. The proposed solutions helped the company to change its processes and structure to be adaptable with the ERP model.