One of the basic facts of 21st Century Enterprise Resource Planning is that the success rate of the implementation of such systems is worryingly poor.

Poor in what sense? Well, quite simply, poor in terms of failing to deliver genuine business benefit. How else can we really define a success rate?

The implementation of a modern ERP package is a major challenge, with associated cost, to any business. Such a challenge should surely be focussed on genuine business improvement – optimal processes, simple, waste-free and directed towards business performance – rather than on the meaningless deployment of system tools?

If the adoption of a new business system fails to deliver such improved processes, reflected in reduced costs, better service to customers and bottom-line profit, then quite simply, the effort and disruption has not been justified.

Of course, we also hear many stories of implementations that have undoubtedly failed. Failed in the sense that the company’s performance with the new system is worse than it was before.

So, how do we address the issues that lead to the current difficulties in this area so central to manufacturing and supply chain operations?

The MLG team has assisted many companies through the implementation of ERP. On some occasions we have been invited by companies whose implementations have fallen into difficulties to come on board and manage the recovery exercise. Even more often we have led or supported improvement initiatives where an existing system has been a negative factor in performance levels at the outset. In acquiring this extensive experience we have observed numerous reasons for failure within standard methodologies and developed our own basic checklist of steps to avoid such problems. Our latest publication reviews the common failings and strips out some of the myths surrounding the subject – myths such as the implementation of a particular package requiring management by a package specialist, when in fact the exercise in hand is one of managing business change. The system is merely a supporting tool.

Such issues are best explained by example. So, with due deference to Dr Eliyahu Goldratt for his creation of The Goal (the novel in which his, then, revolutionary ideas were introduced), our experience is combined in one story. But surely no one business can suffer all the failings that we have observed over so many years? Well, hopefully not! So the fictional IME Corporation was created so that the implementation within one business unit could include comprehensive evaluation of events elsewhere. IME’s Drive Systems unit is leading the way in Lean – extensive use of cells with visual signals, self-directed work teams, 5S, vendor-managed inventories and all the other tools for success. It also has its existing ERP system working well for the business. When this unit’s management team hear that the corporate hierarchy is imposing the (also fictional) SCX package throughout all units and their Sales Manager returns from a conference with tales of woe from others further down the SCX road, they approach their own implementation in a state of dread.

The story follows this implementation through one problem, and solution, after another. Every one of the issues raised in the book is something that MLG has encountered at some point in utilising the world’s leading ERP packages – working on the front line. (In fact there are a couple of romantic complications, but a little fictional licence can’t be a bad thing in what is still, essentially, a textbook.) Like all good tales, of course, there is a happy ending!

ISBN: 978-1-898822-05-9

Price £13.95 (including packing & UK postage) - also discounts for bulk - please enquire

Other books and booklets available from MLG are:

Planning & Control of Engineering to Order Manufacturing by Ian Henderson

Manufacturing Resource Planning by Robin Goodfellow

Sales & Operations Planning by Robin Goodfellow

Planning and Control of Manufacturing Operations by John Kenworthy