Talk:Enterprise resource planning/Archives/2012

question: need examples and demonstrations
I am taking a class and i need examples and demonstrations of WMS & ERP. how can I get? 5-13-2008 --Kovos&amp;Sean (talk) 02:30, 13 May 2008 (UTC)Block quote
 * I would suggest visiting a course based site, and wikiversity happens to have that, which i am involved in. Please find out more from the links within here - Red1 D Oon (talk) 01:06, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

question:need examples & demonstrations
what is enterprise resource planning? (posted by 202.144.89.66) ERP and ERP system though related to each other but they do have difference. ERP itself is a methodology while ERP system is implementation of that methodology. Resource often taken as Human Resource and thus confuse many. In ERP, resource means both Human and other resources like assets, administration sites etc.

ERP applications are as following: 1. SAP 2. Oracle E-Suite (Developed in Oracle and Java) 3. Microsoft Dynamics. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 221.120.224.147 (talk) 12:10, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

question
This page appears to be paraphrased from my www site. However as soon as i added a link to the source material i got Revert: linkspam. May i respectfully suggest an impartial editor consider adding a link to http://www.listensoftware.com/hrxp/silvercacheinfo.asp?txtGlobalVariableName=1002


 * I visited the link. It has a tag = This site was created by Listen Software Solutions . As it looks like advertising, it may have been reverted Sanjiv swarup (talk) 03:10, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

- Some one please tell me what is the license of SQL Ledger? --Sina 11:46, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

well, I don't know

-

I noticed strange modifications, and when i reverted them, i cannot find them in the history. Maybe related to the cache/squids?

What is ERP not?
I think this page gives a good idea of what ERP is. However, I'm left wondering: is any product that performs the described tasks an "ERP system", or are there specific requirements? For example, are there 'ERP information exchange standards', or will any integration between the various components do?


 * The history seems a bit vague. Seems to me ERP was invented by APICS, adopted by a host of software houses, then other standards organizations came along, that perhaps belong in the artilce. User:AlMac|(talk) 21:48, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Scope
There may be value in having a scope section which
 * Lists the various areas of software we expect to see in an ERP, with links to articles on those various areas.
 * Some definition of software that exists that has some of these features, such as accounting, engineering, back office, supply chain, but might not be considered to be ERP if they lack the whole scope.
 * There are also standards outside of ERP that some ERP packages pay lipservice to, while others do not. For example, when one company is manufacturing something that is designed by another company, they both on some ERP, they both on some kind of engineering drawing system, but often the two companies computer systems do not talk to each other when it comes to details on updates to the engineering drawings, so the industries for which this is important, they lobby the ERP software companies to try to fix this.  Thus we have a category here of large special interest groups that want additions to ERP standards.  User:AlMac|(talk) 03:51, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

An ERP system does not always require a service-oriented architecture. Microsoft Dynamics runs on 100% Microsoft LAN/WANS with no Linux, Mac, Sun, Open Source or other 3rd party software required. It can be pure Microsoft, completely homogenous, with no non Microsoft components. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.121.154.115 (talk) 02:40, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

what is really enterprise resource planning?
Is this have no meaning without a software sol?

What do you mean by "sol"? I have experience in Were you aware that ERP was invented in the 1950's because computers into the business world made things practical that could not be done without computers, and the organization APICS came up with the first standards and framework from which ERPs grew?
 * BPCS
 * MAPICS
 * home brew
 * Would it be constructive to add a section on history of ERP to this article, with links to other WIKI articles on parallel theories, such as lean manufacturing and just in time, which tend to share pieces of ERP, with some elements of ERP replaced with alternative approaches? That might put in better perspective these questions about disadvantages.  You need to weigh the power of the tool, and whether that power is a good fit to a company needs. User:AlMac|(talk) 20:32, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I think such a section would be helpful and informative. I, unfortunately, am not the person who can write it, but I would be very interested in reading such a thing; a nice clear definition of what ERP actually IS would also be helpful, if such a thing can be created -- it's possible to spend hours reading vendor web sites and white papers, and everyone seems to have their own suitably vague idea of what ERP is; to some people it's a software product while to other people it seems somewhere between a philosophy and a religion. Kadin2048 17:30, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I second that. Current definition is basically only about ERP systems, making this a software topic. 145.35.88.40 13:11, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

After I had made some obvious corrections to the BPCS article with respect to POV and relevant subtopics, that need to be fleshed out, I went looking for some kind of Category:ERP directory of articles about other ERP software package to give me an idea about WP standards for such articles before I do much more to the BPCS article. I know there are thousands of different packages out there, from original research I did to get best Y2K solution for my employer. My conclusion is that the entire WP covereage of ERP is a huge collection of stubs. Am I mistaken?

If there could be a project to upgrade some of these stubs (see links from examples of ERP software that I added) then there might be less questions from people who not comprehend what an ERP is. We can then direct them to some good articles about good ERP.

User:AlMac|(talk) 22:42, 25 December 2005 (UTC)


 * I am not comfortable with the Categories that are out there. ERP is much more than Manufacturing Production.  I'd like to see categories that reflect the last few decades of manufacturing software development, such as Supply Chain, ERP, Customer relations, etc. User:AlMac|(talk) 20:58, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

The vast majority of ERP software is commercial packages but there is a small bit of open source. That may help with the definition effort. User:AlMac|(talk) 21:51, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Request for re-inclusion of external link.
I added a link to my Software Evaluation website because it offers assistance with the comparison of ERP software and it is a free service that requires no registration or sign up. The matrix/spreadsheet concept used on the site can also be used by across all forms of software evaluation so it is a useful free resource that would be of interest to people visiting this page. Unfortunately someone chose to remove it. Perhaps it could be restored? http://www.software-evaluation.co.uk
 * It was me who removed the link. The general policy in the wikipedia is to have only few external links that provide significant additional value. Since there are quite a few comparison pages, after adding your page others would ask not without reason for the same. So unless you can show that your page is THE page for software comparison, I don't see why yours in particular should be added. --S.K. 18:12, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Unfortunately I cannot show that my page is THE page because this is all a matter of opinion. I do however believe that my site is unique in that it offers a software evaluation service that is completely free. There are no other web sites in the 'net that do this. It does not ask for email addresses or contact details, collects no cookies and visitors can freely use the spreadsheet that is provided. Furthermore the method used will provide people seeking to compare software with the means to do so. Even if they choose not to use the spreadsheet they will benefit from seeing the methods used and applying them to their own particular problems. I put a lot of time into developing this and I just wanted to share it with others. http://www.software-evaluation.co.uk 13:56 (BST) 29 October 2005
 * There are external sites which are leaders of the major areas of ERP such as Supply Chain, alternatives to Material Requirements Planning, alternative ways of doing manufacturing design work and engineering of new parts. Each of them have directories of which ERP do best job of meeting needs of thos particular application focus.  But in the USA thanks to mergers and aquisitions we are rapidly moving from a world of thousands of competing vendors to the Microsoft monopoly of ERP where future innovation will go dead slow. User:AlMac|(talk) 20:36, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Another link wacked
Hey, I put a set of articles that explain how major ERP software works from a Database Administrators viewpoint, with a discussion of problems of implementation of the major vendors many months ago. Then a couple weeks ago it is gone. ERP Critics are not tolerated? Afraid of the truth about major ERP vendors and the wares they sell? Only the "sell" side gets full voice, the "disadvantages" condensed to ten sentences with no discussion or referential material? "Disadvantage: some systems can be difficult to use" what does that tell anyone?


 * "Disadvantage: some systems can be difficult to use" is a vague statement perhaps from perspective of someone who does not know the basics of ERP implementation theory, such as:

User:AlMac|(talk) 20:44, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
 * For ERP to work to its full potential, the users need to have a modicum of education in its basics
 * A company with the greatest ERP in the world and zero training in its use ... that company will be totally destroyed in the marketplace of competition by a company that has the worst ERP in the world and great training in its use. This is because the state of art of success is much more highly dependent on the skills and experience of the work force than whatver data is managed by the computer.

Examples of packages whacked
I moved what was whacked to a stub collection of packages. I think there is need for separate Articles and listings: User:AlMac|(talk) 10:26, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Vendors of commercial ERP Software
 * Sources of Open Source ERP
 * Examples of ERP software
 * Strehgths and Weaknesses of Commercial vs. Open Source, in general, and ERP in specific

crit
Gonna take out some of these criticism because they are extremely vague.


 * Could we replace practice of anonymous comments by anonymous editors with WIKI standards of self-identification? User:AlMac|(talk) 20:46, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Implementation
I noticed that this section had been written from the historical perspective of what happens when an ERP is installed without professional help, so I rewrote pieces. Companies can be experienced in doing whatever it is they are in business to do, but if they are experienced in implementing complex systems, that implies they not using any one long enough to get value from it. Generally, companies that are good at whatever it is they do, are not experienced in changing how they run their business, such as implementing complex computer systems, handling the retraining of the staff to work with the replacement system, changing how they run their business to best mesh with how the replacement computer system functions.

Thus, we tend to have lots of computer press stories of disasters by companies that tried to implement a complex system, without proper professional guidance, and ended up spending millions of dollars over several years, and having nothing substantioal to show for it. At the same time, there are hundreds of thousands of manufacturers around the world with very successful implmentations, and this process is so mundane as to not merit mention in the computer media. Thus, a person who is ignorant about the ERP industry might think the massive media attention to failed implementations is the norm. User:AlMac|(talk) 21:07, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Disadvantages
I added to this list, but I am concerned about the punctuation, and whether the format adheres to Manual of Style standards. User:AlMac|(talk) 21:26, 23 December 2005 (UTC) Thanks. I see the punctuation has been vastly improved since my comment. User:AlMac|(talk) 22:43, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

Advantages
I am considering adding such a section, to help balance what might appear to be a POV that ERP is a bad thing. User:AlMac|(talk) 22:44, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

RE: Speedy delete tag
Advertising isn't a criteria for speedy deletion anyway, but I fail to see how this has been taken to be so. ERP is an established and well known term in the IT industry, well worth a detailed Wikipedia article. If you really think it should be deleted, please take it to AfD. - N (talk) 13:43, 29 December 2005 (UTC)


 * When I first stumbled over this article, and tried to improve it, it was


 * a stub
 * seemed to focus on publishers of ERP packages
 * had questions from people who had no idea what ERP is, or little experience in successful one
 * heavily pushing open source ERP, which in my experience is a significant topic, but probably a microscopic percentage of the world of ERP


 * I thought that listing example ERP packages, with decent articles on them, would be more encyclopaedic than the focus on what companies are active in the industry. However, the articles I have found on Wiki, that describe some particular ERP package, are also stubs. User:AlMac|(talk) 16:35, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

History
I see someone removed this:

In the early days of business computing, companies used to write their own software to control their business processes. This is an expensive approach. Since many of these processes occur in common across various types of businesses, common reusable software may provide cost-effective alternatives to custom software. Thus some ERP software caters to a wide range of industries from service sectors like software vendors and hospitals to manufacturing industries and even to government departments.

I believe the text, that was removed, is accurate for software history in general. However, I have my doubts that it was ever the case for ERP. ERP was invented around 1950 by APICS thanks to mini computers becoming affordable to mid sized enterprises, and pretty quickly there were a flood of commercial outfits with software packages that met the APICS standards.

I think perhaps there ought to be separate main article(s) on User:AlMac|(talk) 10:56, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * the history of development of ERP and its related software pieces and related stuff like CRM and EDI
 * challenges of selecting and implementing major complex software packages like ERP.

Suggested Change to Disadvantages Section
The disadvantage listed below isn't a disadvantage of ERP systems in my mind but of organizational structure. Properly implemented ERP systems can help to solve some of these process and communication gaps between departments and partners. The ERP system might simply make bottlenecks more visible and as a result be blamed by some system users as the cause (the shoot the messenger syndrome). I'd suggest someone who knows ERP systems well remove this disadvantage if they agree. Antonrojo 17:05, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

"The system can suffer from the "weakest link" problem - an inefficiency in one department or at one of the partners may affect other participants."

=Deletion of General Links= I deleted some of the See Also links on this page which were very general business terms such as Marketing and Manufacting in keeping with wiki policy of limiting the links to only the most relevant.Antonrojo 19:07, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

=Delete Terrorism Section in Advantages?= This is in response to edit comment from 128.113.142.131 on 3/1/06 stating 'Revised syntax on terror scenario; probably could remove it entirely though':

I also had thought about deleting this sentence when editing the same section. While it is a pretty fantastic example (and sounds a little like an excerpt from marketing literature intended to justify a major government ERP expense) it does provide an interesting and practical example of the advantages of the software, which is no small feat in an article about what is basically glorified accounting software. My main question would be whether most ERP software could 'prevent editing of a bill of materials' without a prohibitive amount customization.


 * I agree. It is a ridiculous example, and rather than showing how ERP will protect us from terrorism (it won't), it instead makes it seem like it would be very easy to create mistakes in your manufacturing process.

What the hell happened here? There was a huge section a few days ago about "What is ERP", while subjective I felt it was still valuble and could have been improved rather than just wiped out. Can people just do that? Shouldn't changes go through at least some kind of vote?

ERP for Paint Industries
Can ERP be put to use in the Paint Industry?


 * Yes, I spent 10 years working on ERP implementations for a paint manufacturer footie 21:15, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

What is the difference between ERP system and Accounting system like ACCPAC?
someone please tell me..

well the ERP is like a huge ship which has a small room named Accounting System. ERP is an enterprise solution where as the Accounting System deals only in the accounts terrain only.

links and content to promote corporate bodies is strongly discouraged
Enterprise Resource Planning

i requested an IMPARTIAL editor consider adding an external link to http://www.listensoftware.com/hrxp/silvercacheinfo.asp?txtGlobalVariableName=1002 on the page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_resource_planning

However the response i got was from the same editor who reverted my original edit: "No, your edit history clearly shows that you've simply inserted a spam link to your corporate pitch page. I can see no text or 'paraphrase' from the link you originally inserted to the text in the article. I have additionally reverted your latest addition, which was to simply vandalize the article by hijacking links and inserting your opinion about your product. Please stop. Kuru"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_resource_planning "the PeopleSoft HRMS and Financials systems are generally considered better than SAP's HRMS solution. And SAP's manufacturing and CRM systems are generally considered better than PeopleSoft's equivalents[citation needed]. So an organization large enough to justify the purchase of an ERP system, may choose to purchase the PeopleSoft HRMS and Financials modules from Oracle, and their remaining applications from SAP"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Just_zis_Guy%2C_you_know%3F "There seems to be a terrible bias among some editors that some sort of random speculative "I heard it somewhere" pseudo information is to be tagged with a "needs a cite" tag. Wrong. It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be sourced. This is true of all information"

This last applies to biographies of living individuals. Addition of links and content to promote corporate bodies is strongly discouraged, and per recent comments from the Foundation is likely to remain so. Guy 06:57, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Automation (OSS) vs ERP
well i have a question for all of you

How can you differentiate between an operational support system and an Enterprise resource planning system? From my prospective both are the same they only differ in the resource category as ERP eats up all the resources as compared to OSS.

•	Incase of unified view of the organization OSS and ERP are side by side

•	Incase of restructuring and business process integration there is no difference

Then why use ERP where as we have OSS as the cheap solution and provides all the benefits of ERP

--202.125.149.158 05:37, 1 December 2006

=ERP, MRP, & Service Management=

Calling all business historians,

I am researching the history of MRP/MRP II/ERP systems in manufacturing, and any possible relationship to the concept of "Service Management."

NOT "IT Service Management" - just "Service Management."

The combination of the words Service + Management must have gained momentum somewhere, perhaps even formalization. Adding "IT" to "Service Management" must have happened somewhat after that. Did I see an HBR article on this at some time? Vague memory...

One working hypothesis is that the evolution of MRP -> ERP in the manufacturing world led people to ask, "What is the equivalent for the service sector?" Was this question asked? What was the answer?

Thanks,

Charles T. Betz 03:21, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

EDI ?
I have moved the following paragraph below. What is EDI? The para (nor anything else in the ERP page) doesn't explain what EDI refers to. The closest I can see in WP is Electronic Data Interchange but that doesn't seem to fit the meaning very well. In addition there is no reference / citation.

Evidence for this can be seen within EDI, where the concept of best practice, even with decades of effort remains elusive. A large retailer, for example, wants EDI plus some minor tweak that they perceive puts them ahead of their competition. Mid-market companies adopting ERP often take the vanilla version and spend half as much as the license cost doing customisations that deliver their competitive edge. In this way they actively work against best practice because they perceive that the way they operate is best practice, irrespective of what anyone else is doing.

rgds, ||:) johnmark† 12:57, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't have a citation handy, but having worked with both ERP and EDI in ERP, I can say that you are correct, EDI is Electronic Data Interchange. EDI is a way of commuting with other enterprises in your supply chain.  Other ways include e-mail, and internet pages where you use a password associated with your company, and get the info just for your company.  There are many different methods of communicating information from one company to another that you are in business with, EDI being one of those many ways.  There's also EDI II, which is a higher level of sophistication.  I don't consider EDI or e-mail or FAX to be part of ERP per se, but there often is a need in managing ERP to have some kind of interface to bring data in and out of a corporate data base in a controlled and secure fashion, meaning that EDI-support is often found to be part of one or more of the application suite. User:AlMac|(talk) 22:03, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

about erp
wat are the types of erp —Preceding unsigned comment added by 136.186.1.194 (talk) 08:43, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

2010 edits
I have reviewed this article and I am attempting to rework it with the goal of clarifying the language and providing relevant citations. Note to Watchers: My intent is not to step on anyone's toes. I am just trying to provide some clarification on what I think is an important subject. The lack of citations on the page bugs me. I welcome any help with my efforts. Thanks. RM MARTIN (talk) 00:29, 21 February 2010 (UTC)


 * RM MARTIN, I respect your irresistible urge to quote a book ("E-Business and ERP: Rapid Implementation and Project Planning"), even though, by looking at its abstract (http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0471406775.html), it certainly does not constitute the most autoritative historical account of ERP (it was published in 2001 and talked about ERP as thing of the future!). In exchange for such respect, I ask that you respect the historical facts and do not remove the reference to GartnerGroup as the first user of the term "ERP", which had long been approved by this wikipedia community before you stepped in. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.28.141.207 (talk) 10:19, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

The author has the following qualifications:

Murrell G. Shields (McLean, VA) is the Director of Management Solutions and Services and National Leader of Technology and Infrastructure Services at Deloitte & Touche.

and the book itself has the following reviews:

"this is a useful book for any organisation thinking of implementing a new ERP system" (Sunday Business, 26 August, 2001)

"...useful guide...extensive exploration...give you lots of useful advice and assistance..." (Supply Management, 18 October, 2001)

"...does provide a comprehensive overview of how an ERP implementation should be planned and managed..." (Information Age, December 2001)

but the key is that the citation refering to the Gartner Group can not be verified and that goes against Wiki policy: "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—what counts is whether readers can verify that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source (see below), not whether editors think it is true."

"The burden of evidence lies with the editor who adds or restores material.[1] All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed to a reliable, published source using an inline citation. The source should be cited clearly and precisely, with page numbers where appropriate, and must clearly support the material as presented in the article.[2] If no reliable third-party sources can be found on a topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it."

Please provide a verifiable source to back your assertion. Thanks. RM MARTIN (talk) 01:58, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Just to clarify, Gartner reports, and any other scholarly pay-per-view source are most certainly reliable sources for the purpose of verification here; difficult or expensive to verify is not the same as unverifiable. The book RM MARTIN is using also seems to be a reliable source.  That being said, I'd love to see a more specific quote from the Gartner report here; you can certainly quote a sentence to help us verify the material you're asserting.   Kuru   (talk)  02:46, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
 * The Gartner source I have provided is not only reliable and verifiable: it also is the FIRST written document that uses the acronym ERP. "E.R.P." had never been written down before. Further confirmation of what I'm saying (if you don't feel like searcihng the orginal Gartner report) you will easily find by consulting online "Enterprise Resource Planning - A Brief History", by F.R. Jacobs and F.C. Weston, published on Elsevier's Journal of Operations Management, 25 (2007) 357-363. This is a scholarly archived journal, not one of the zillion books on ERP. All sources/references are not the same, you know... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fergussa (talk • contribs) 17:11, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

ok —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.229.236.214 (talk) 09:32, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Missing the point
Unfortunately, the page reads like an advertisement - all the hygiene words such as integrated, single database, real time - none of which are fundamental to ERP. Without defining the essence of ERP the whole article misleads readers.

ERP provides unified planning of all resources that an organisation has or may need in order to produce goods and services. Unlike MRP and MRP II, the concept of ERP includes materials, sub-assemblies, workstations, tools, consumables, people in each role. The "orders" extend beyond hard orders to include generic orders that may need to be tailored, forecasts, planned (expected) orders far into the future. The processes required to make the goods and services are also resources and may also need to be planned. These can include work instructions, working diagrams etc.

Unless these scenarios are provided all that comes across is a big, integrated database. If, however, such a description is given, all the other parts become clear. For example, as part of planning, cashflow is involved, including orders taken, orders given, work in progress, lead times (internal or of suppliers).

Whether the system then consists of one or two, or multiple distributed databases is immaterial. Also an organisation may not require certain aspects planned. For example, an ERP system may cater for a 10 year plan, whereby future technologies are defined, the people who have those skills may be defined, the people who need training in these technologies may be defined, which may extend to providing bursaries to people at school today, to study at university in, say six years time. This may well be of interest to a motor manufacturer that contemplates electric car manufacture based on technologies not yet production ready. It may foresee production of generic vehicles, where the mix of automatic, manual, convertable, sedan, 4 × 4 etc. would be firmed later, but where planning with external vendors e.g. windshield manufacturers is required for them to set up their plans. Even finances may NOT be an essential aspect. For example, an ERP system could be used to plan amateur theatrics.

The concept of an expansion of bills of materials IS fundamental - the BOM can have ALL resources incorporated. For example set-up time, skills, instructions, tools, consumables. And the acquisition time for these items. And their optimal ordering quantities, standard part IDs, preferred suppliers. Transportation and distribution can be included. Similar aspects can be defined for serivces. Manufacturing is a typical area, but financail services could equally use ERP according to this concept. — Preceding unsigned comment added by AndreasMD (talk • contribs) 17:49, 18 June 2012 (UTC)