Research of Erp System Integration Into Lean Manufacturing

Abstract

Nowadays, the highly competitive market makes industrial companies search for new decisions to improve their competitive advantages. It can be lowering product cost, manufacturing and delivering faster than competitors or being flexible when producing different quantities of different products for different customers. Most popular instruments that help companies to reach previously mentioned competitive advantages are implementing Lean Manufacturing strategies or ERP systems into their production systems. The way of using these systems might become the main indicator of companies’ success in the future. This research aims to create a guideline for integrating ERP system into Lean Manufacturing system. It focuses on the manufacturing companies that are already using such a system and can share their good and bad experiences. To reach this aim, the scientific literature is being analyzed by retrieving the CSFs for such an integration process. Using these CSFs, the relation between them and the positive outcomes of the integration process is established and tested using an online survey. The results of the survey are processed using empirical methods. Moreover, the research methodology for evaluating the ERP system integration into Lean Manufacturing level is established and tested in three case analyses.

Implementing enterprise resource planning for lean waste minimisation: challenges and proposed strategies

“…According to the experts who were interviewed, human resource management and project management are widely used for minimising waste. Thus, these two functions will also be important for Lean waste minimisation (Marcinauskas, 2021). Furthermore, according to Marcinauskas (2021), sales and marketing, product development and design, inventory management and finance and accounting functions are useful for any industry.…”

“…Overall, the majority of the experts (R1, R3, R4, R6, R7, R8, R9, R12 and R15) expressed as well as Li et al (2012), Marcinauskas (2021) and Powell et al (2013a, b), the functionalities of the ERP system can help overcome the shortcoming of the application of Lean concept such as long-term commitment that requires a lot of managerial effort to implement and maintain, risk-related aspects, such as frequent changes in material prices, delays in settling contractors' bills, design errors. Although it may be noted that not all issues can be addressed only via the use of an ERP system, it does enable timely data collection and analysis and smooth production planning and control (Perico et al, 2019).…”

“…Lean construction is a long-term commitment that requires a lot of managerial effort to implement and maintain. Furthermore, there is a risk that the implemented system will not SASBE 13,2 reach the intended objectives (Li et al, 2012;Marcinauskas, 2021;Powell et al, 2013a, b). Moreover, according to Issa (2013), Lean construction has not addressed risk-related aspects, such as changes in material prices or increases in those prices, delays in settling contractors' bills, design errors and nature-appropriateness, and poor quality of the local materials.…”

“…ERP for lean waste management organisational changes, implementation time, inadequacy of the training provided to employees or end users, lack of commitment of the managers, ineffective communication with the users, lack of an effective project management methodology, conflicts among user departments, issues in the composition of project teams, misunderstanding of the change requirements, and resistance to change to a new system as the most critical challenges faced in adopting ERP systems in waste minimisation applications. According to the literature findings, integration problems, implementation cost and time are the most critical challenges in the adaptation of ERP in Lean waste minimisation (Alturkistani, 2018;Li et al, 2012;Marcinauskas, 2021;Powell et al, 2012Powell et al, , 2013aVickranth et al, 2019;Zeng et al, 2012). In contrast, finding the most appropriate software, product quality, vendor unreliability and failure to redesign the business process were determined as the challenges that have the least impact on waste minimisation activities.…”

“…However, only a few studies have revealed the synergy that could exist in the construction industry between an ERP system and the Lean concept (Piazolo and Felderer, 2012;Powell et al, 2013a, b;Vickranth et al, 2019). In the manufacturing industry, although Lean and ERP systems can enhance production systems when used independently, Marcinauskas (2021) claimed that applying the ERP system to the Lean manufacturing system is the most effective way. However, the literature focussing on applying ERP functions with Lean in construction waste minimisation is scarce.…”