Effectiveness of Inter-Organizational Systems in Global Manufacturing

Abstract

Enterprise Information Systems, such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, have been applied to integrate business processes within a global manufacturing enterprise. Recently, the inter-organizational systems are applied to assist in business data sharing and collaboration among enterprises based on the ERP application. However, their resource requirements and failure rates are high, and many enterprises are concerned about the Business-to-Business (B2B) effectiveness. In this research, the authors study global manufacturing enterprises, which developed their B2B systems with Taiwanese government sponsorship successfully. B2B effectiveness is evaluated through operational efficiency and profitability, while the business scale, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) induced supplier numbers, and application scope are considered influencing factors. After the evidence of multiple regression models and non-parametric statistic testing, the results show that only the application scope has a significant impact on profitability. The authors discuss these results from the perspective of enterprise integration as well as the system application scope and give suggestions to global manufacturing enterprises that want to apply inter-organizational systems.