Enterprise Resource Planning systems resourcing

These are software packages that can be configured according to users needs, e.g. enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Full life cycle validation is required. 

The big players in the chemical industry have developed very powerful company-specific ERP systems (enterprise resource planning earlier this type of system was denoted as production planning and control) since the 1960s. The growing costs to maintain and adapt these systems have motivated the move to integrated standard business software systems in the last decade. The majority of the big chemical companies use SAP R/3 resp. SAP ERP from SAP AG other well-known solution vendors include Marcam (now part of Infor) and JD Edwards (now part of PeopleSoft resp. Oracle). 

This section describes two examples of IT applications that require their supporting networks to be validated. The first example describes a Manufacturing Execution System (MLS) based on a LAN and the second example describes an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) application that uses a WAN. 

One approach for the seamless support of the entire supply chain of a company are so-called ERP systems (enterprise resource planning) [811]. The basic idea of an ERP system is that of a centralized database, which stores company-wide all relevant data concerning the business processes. This approach fails, because a monolithic ERP system cannot fulfill all conceivable requirements in general [817]. Nowadays, a typical company uses on average 50 different, mission-critical applications for the support of its business processes, as empirical studies have shown [830]. Furthermore, for economic reasons it is not feasible to replace these legacy systems by new applications [973]. 

Light, B., Holland, C.P., Kelly, S., Wills, K. Best Of Breed IT Strategy An Alternative To Enterprise Resource Planning Systems. In Hansen, H.R., Bichler, M., Mahrer, H. (eds.) Proceedings of the 8 European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS 2000), July 03-05, 2000, Vienna, Austria, pp. 652-659 (2000)... 

Seppala, J., Basson, L., Norris, G.A. Decision analysis frameworks for life-cycle impact assessment. Journal of Industrial Ecology 5, 45-68 (2001) Shanks, G., Seddon, P. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Journal of Information Technology 15, 243-244 (2000)... 

IS refers to the software packages and databases that provide the functionality to implement the business processes. These include such packages as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), Electronic Document Management Systems (EDMS) and Maintenance Management Systems. 

A hierarchy of systems can be considered to consist of OCS, MBS, and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems (Figure 6.1). The issue of where individual systems implement particular functions in the hierarchy becomes blurred. As applications become more distributed, the ability to interchange data in a simple, low cost and validatable manner will become even more important. Open applications will therefore cover applications ranging across these three layers. 

This chapter is concerned with the validation of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems in the pharmaceuticals industry and seeks to establish a project model whereby the objectives of validation become embodied in the objectives of project implementation. 

Validating Enterprise/Manufacturing Resource Planning Systems... 

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