Why ERP? Key points

The book was written similar to "The Goal". There is a guy responsible from solving a problem and there is a professor who helps with asking questions and there are other plants and similar environment.
In this book, the guy, Billy, is responsible from an furniture plant. The Boss says that they will buy another plant and he wants and ERP integration between to plants in order to manage easily.
Billy goes to seminars about SAP and talks with professor and talks with the managers in the other plant and makes a conclusion. During these events there are some key points about implementing an ERP.

• ERP system is not a silver bullet that solves all the problems. It is only a tool to solve specific problems.
• Implementing an ERP does not bring competitiveness if your processes are not competitive.
• ERP is the integrated solution of MRP with accounting, sales and other departmens/systems.
• There are many ERP solutions, especially for sector specific.
• SAP has a R/3 system which includes many generic modules with "best practice"s.
• With an ERP system system, information sharing and entering the data once is maximized.This reduces the in accurate sales, demand and other forecasts. At least one forecast for all departments.
  
• Working on the same sector does not show that business have same operations cycles.
  
• ERP systems are not flexible for flexible/project based tailoring systems. Generally if there are many repeating tasks than ERP systems, makes the life easier.
• For mass production or just in time production with very little changing components, ERP systems increases the supply chain, manufacturing and sales cycle with integrated solutions to other systems. So the total output of the company increases because of automation.
• If you want to implement an ERP system, a team should be setup with personnel who has enough information about what it is done in the company.
• There are many consultant that wants to help to find a proper way.
• There is a fast implementation solution for SAP, called ASAP. It is a methodology that puts a roadmap. There are many configuration parameters for SAP and this methodology asks questions to define these parameters.
• Before implementing an ERP systems, problems with the processes, organization and other aspects should be solved as operations point of view, since managers solve the problems not the programs.
  
• If in the manual process, people do not obey the rules, implementing an ERP system does not solve the problem if those people do not enter proper data to the system.
• Before implementing a system the effected users should be defined and the final picture about these guys should be clarified in order to minimize the resistance of people to the change.
• During the implementation, generally technology guys make under estimation about the problems. This should be considered carefully buy the managers.
• Training is another most important part of the implementation. If people do not know how to use the software they make wrong things and trying to recover them might be frightening.
• Taking consultancy speeds the implementation. Although it is expensive, going to a wrong way might be more expensive.
• With the pressure of time and top management some wrong decisions can be given to save the day. But these bring more problems, may be the failure.
• After the implementation, new firms should stay in business, so the competitiveness should not be killed by changing the competitive processes in the company, just to automate.
• Best suitable ERP solution to the current processes/workflow should be chosen to implement, else it will be cumbersome.

In the end, Bill resigns from the company and becomes a consultant about ERP solutions for furniture sector and gives consultancy to his previous company.