Author: Wang Rong published: 2003.08.26 Source: Software engineering expert network
introduction:
Joining the WTO, the company's competitive environment has undergone fundamental changes, globalization, informationization, and excess economic era, requires enterprises to establish efficient and dynamic fast reflection systems, but current Chinese companies are generally adapted. Informatization is an inevitable choice for enterprises, and is also a tool and means to enhance business competitiveness. Since the 1970s, domestic companies began to develop MRPII. In recent years, the ERP market has been in full swing, many companies use and have purchased ERP products, but the company implements ERP difficulties, more contradictory, uncontrollable factors, implement ERP There are very few companies that have successful. The Xi'an Railway Signal Factory of the ERP since 1998 has gradually emerged from a relatively successful Chinese-style implementation of ERP in several years. Xi'an Railway Signal Factory In implementing some of the experiences and lessons accumulated in the process of ERP, will make domestic companies, especially state-owned large enterprises, will take less detours during the implementation of the ERP process.
I. Problems facing Chinese companies
The biggest problem facing Chinese companies is management. With the acceleration of China's accession to the WTO and the global economic integration, the adjustment of the industrial structure will be carried out throughout the world. Can companies win competition in the market, can have sustainable ability, and the key is to manage.
In the global competitive market, whether the process or discrete manufacturing, whether it is single-piece production, multi-variety small batch production, less variety repetitive production or standard products, manufacturing internal management In the case of the following questions: If the company may have excellent sales staff to sell products, there is no way to deliver in the production line; the workshop management personnel complained that the purchase department did not supply the raw materials they need in time, in fact, procurement The department is too efficient. Some materials hoarded in the warehouse are not finished for 10 years. The warehouse library is full, the capital turn is very slow; many companies should use 6 to 13 weeks to calculate the amount of materials required. Therefore, the ordering cycle can only be 6 ~ 13 weeks; the date of the order and the purchase order is different, no one is affirmative; the financial department does not trust the data of the warehouse department, not to come Calculate manufacturing costs ...
Can not be denied, these situations are the severe management issues of most of our companies, however, what can we have any effective ways to solve it? - The fact is that when China's business community has not fully realized the seriousness of this problem, foreign ERP / MRPII software vendors have already quietly entered the Chinese market, and over time, ERP begins Gradually be known by the Chinese business community, the theoretical world.
Second, ERP system is an inevitable choice for enterprise improvement management
Current domestic business execution has a large elasticity, and modern technology facilities are not particularly advanced, and the market changes in the face. Chinese companies have spent great strength in plant management, such as consumption, increased power, etc., but they are not systematic, and they are intermittent, surface, and have not summarized the inner law.
Chinese companies must consider the conversion and management of their own institutions, but also to adapt to the rapid changes in the market. Therefore, improve the comprehensive management level of the enterprise, the marketplace ability is the urgent task of Chinese companies. This requires a comprehensive ERP system to help companies manage.
The ERP management system has dual core, namely management ideas and information technology. ERP is to use information technology to effectively integrate capital flow, logistics, and information flow within the company, so that it is coordinated to achieve optimal performance of the entire system.
The information flow is the neural network system of the enterprise. Management information There are three directions in the enterprise: First, the flow information is reached upwards from the base layer to the middle layer, which is the summary process of the information; the second is to move downward flow information from the upper layer to the middle layer, this is The decomposition process of strategic, target, direction; three is horizontal flow information, which is the communication and coordination process between the sectors. Information must be true, accurate and timely, in order to ensure the effectiveness of the organization, implement ERP can bring high efficiency information transmission, which is mainly manifested in the information format standardization, transfer channel fixation, and warning reminders, so that the delivery is smooth, no distortion. Logistics is better than the enterprise digestive system. Improve logistics speed and quality is BPR (BusinessProcessReengineering) - Optimization of business processes, using information methods will have many effects on business processes, it can automatically remove artificial operations in a part, changing process order or implement parallelization, strict The status and goal of the monitoring process, realizing the integration of different tasks and procedures, intermediary activities during the elimination process, cross space to coordinate the process, improve the analysis of decision-making information, so that basic management week, standard, leadership monitoring is timely and accurate.
The capital flow is like a blood circulation system, and it is also a comprehensive reflection of the quality of business operations. With tools, the tools can be found and controlled with the ingredients of raw materials, the product backup phenomenon and the sales links, timely solve the problem, expose the management bottleneck in time, solve the financial management of the enterprise in the enterprise is limited to the post-calculation Problems in previous and process control.
ERP realizes the integration of information flow, logistics, and capital flow, thereby achieving resource sharing. At the same time, the timely and efficient processing of information, reducing the processing burden, statistics, analysis and excavation of data, and extracting knowledge. In summary, implementing ERP can effectively solve many troubles from enterprises, enhance integrated management.
Third, the implementation of ERP is difficult
ERP project is a huge system engineering. ERP has a lot of successful cases in China's nearly ten years. How to implement this uniform in ERP is good, and many companies are increasingly urgently needed to solve problems, so analyze and solve the difficulties in the implementation of ERP, and can effectively promote ERP implementation.
The main difficulty to implement ERP is currently in the following:
First, the target is not clear. Most business mistakes believe that ERP implementation is a simple enterprise information construction project or an enterprise management information system project. The target is too high or too low, it is easy to blur. The target is ambiguous, it is difficult to implement the specific implementation, regardless of the focus, beard eyebrows, resulting in excessive investment, minimal effectiveness, and the implementation of fatigue. The clear implementation of the goal is for the implementation of the ERP project, it is like the port of the sea. If there is no specific, clear navigation target and direction, the ship is easily affected by various environmental factors.
Second, the understanding is not clear. The ERP project is only considered as computer project, and three concepts of management ideas, management software, and management information systems lack deep understanding and understanding. The computer system is not a management purpose, but a management tool; ERP project is not a computer project, but a management engineering is a comprehensive innovation of enterprise management model. It is a deep management revolution. The workload is large, and the performance is long. It is a very complex management system project.
Third, enterprise basic management is weak. The basic management of Chinese enterprises is weak, and there is a phenomenon that cannot be compiled. It is not possible. The company lacks strategic concepts, system concepts; they can't be stunned to business processes, financial accounting, etc.; customer data is in sales and finances Unity, not to say sales and distribution business processes; these innate insufficient due to the weakness of the opponents, but after the WTO, these weak links have highlighted with the entry of multinational companies with strategic advantages and integrated resource advantages. Due to weak management bases, companies do not have prerequisites for implementing ERP, and there is no problem with business process reconstruction, but a new problem of business processes. Long-term lack of advanced concepts is always a way to implement, and it is necessary to implement and use ERP systems under certain management philosophical guidance. Even if the quality excellent enterprises will also be difficult to standardize due to irregularities of external market environment. Fourth, talent is lacking. When the company has developed software, the reason is the reason for the lack of talents; software suppliers have long and short, and users are difficult to distinguish and apply. The new knowledge is wide, the amount is large, the update is fast, it is difficult to comprehensively and master; the individuality of corporate personalities and industry is different, the enterprise management foundation is different, resulting in difficult to develop advanced and economical and practical and commercially available value software.
Fifth, the conflict is implemented. The integration of ERP and the contradiction between the intensive difficulties in the middle department, the contradiction between the advanced nature of ERP and the quality of corporate personnel, has a vast contradiction between the application range, and the accuracy of the plan and the contradiction between the IT system basic data. For longer implementation cycles and the contradictions of IT technologies, the contradiction between enterprise needs and system working center of gravity, high input and slow income, long implementation cycle and corporate "one hand" attaches to the degree and psychological endurance Wait.
Sixth, uncontrollable factors. ERP involves the change of the company's management concept, the new construction, restructuring and recrystal and corporate resource integration, so it is called "one hand" project, but the "one hand" project is uncontrollable; the uniqueness, integrity of basic data The accuracy requires uncontrollable; the quality of the implementation person is uncontrollable; due to inconsistency due to different levels, the demand and acceptance standards are uncontrollable; due to the misalignment of various functions and concepts, it often leads to the implementation of the subject's absence. . These factors ultimately lead to the implementation cycle, cost is uncontrollable.
There are many contradictions above, if you don't properly resolve, you will increase investment risks in ERP.
Fourth, some countermeasures to implement ERP
The success of ERP implementation is that the system operation is integrated, the business process is rationalized, and the performance monitoring is dynamized, and the management improvement is continuous. Successful implementation of ERP will bring the benefits to enterprises, which will make market response speeds accelerate, the product production cycle is accelerated, the rate of capital turnover is accelerated, the customer satisfaction is improved, the product quality is improved, the total cost is reduced, and the competitiveness of the company will ultimately improve the competitiveness of the company .
Summarizing some of our factories in implementing the ERP process, making the following countermeasures:
First, the beginning of a consensus of the ERP project with the enterprise "one hand". ERP is not the end point, it is a starting line. Enterprise implementation ERP is the beginning of the entire management change. When companies need to reach and integrate their resources, they will face changes, including: business processes, personnel configuration, product configuration rationalization. Then the leadership of this change can only be a "one hand", and only he has reached a consensus with the project team, and the ERP project will begin.
Second, clarify the project implementation goals. Implementing ERP is a profound management revolution, a systematic project that is costly, implementation cycle, and wide-wide, therefore needs to be strategically planned, and it is necessary to do a good job of designation, including fund budget, process control, human equipping, organization Safeguards for system design, and explicitly implement the goals. Clearly, a practical implementation goal is the guarantee for the successful implementation of ERP, and it is also a standard that measures the success of an ERP project. The implementation of the ERP project is based on the basic situation of the enterprise, and the development strategic objectives of the company. The ERP project implementation group passed the comprehensive analysis of the bottleneck of enterprises, affecting the bottleneck development of enterprises, and proposes the demand and expectation of enterprises in information technology, and formulates the total objectives, sub-objectives and phased targets of the project. Third, comprehensive investors, select software suppliers. First, enterprises must clarify their own purpose and demand, first as self-analysis and diagnosis, and then in depth, we must examine customers with many suppliers and suppliers, if necessary, please participate in planning and identification. Enterprises should be put into output analysis, pay attention to cost, neither the full-scale pursuit of functional software, and do not have to save the cost of the time to meet the needs of enterprises, and take care of practical and open. The software should be managed by management, not management and adaptation software, and cannot be inverted. The software should be suitable for the process of enterprises, and the anastomosis is high, so it can reduce secondary development, guarantee the implementation cycle, and smooth BPR. Suppliers have the best service experience in the same industry, to have a case in successful implementation of ERP, so it will reduce the implementation risk and can greatly shorten the implementation cycle in basic data preparations such as software coding system. At the same time, it is necessary to investigate the comprehensive strength of software suppliers, the ability to implement personnel quality and its follow-up service. The selection of software suppliers will choose a wedding couple, they can not succeed in a good partner.
It is recommended that when choosing an ERP software product, consider the following factors:
1. Software company's nature;
2, software company development capabilities;
3, software company's service system and service capabilities;
4, ease of use of software products;
5. Scalability of software products;
6, upgradeability of software products;
7. The life cycle of software products;
8. The price system of software products;
Fourth, Gold Tower Implementation Team. If you want to successfully implement ERP, you must have a batch of proficient ERP management ideas, master software technology, and organize the implementation advisory team of ERP project experience under the Chinese environment, and implement ERP projects to rely on the entire team. Established a topic of the pyramid of the company to manage the entire project, choose and equipped with trustee. At the bottom of the pyramid, the application consultant includes the implementation of the business implementation and technology implementation, the intermediate layer is the management consultant to ensure the success of the project, the progress and direction of the control project, the top is the consultant, mainly responsible for integration business, Improve management. The application consultant is closely working closely with the specific business personnel and technicians of the enterprise, and the management consultant is in communication with the middle-level leadership of the enterprise, and the consultant is communicated with the high-level leadership of the enterprise. In this way, the inside of the project can be collapsed in the entire project, and it is guaranteed to be smooth at each link.
Fifth, clear demand analysis, feasible embodiments. Enterprises don't have to have problems and demand for themselves, as needed, requiring consultants to provide valuable reference recommendations. The consultant needs to conduct an overall situation of the enterprise, the main proximity of the company's production and management activities, help companies come up with the problems needed to solve from many problems, so that the implementation goals are more clear. It should be noted that the user's demand is not a constant fixed value, but is dynamic. Patience to listen to the doubts, difficulties and requirements of the grassroots operators, establish the trust and cooperative relationship between each other, and the implementation of the project is easy to succeed.
Sixth, pay attention to training and run through. ERP is a new management model to transform the old management model of the original enterprise, which is advanced, effective management ideas and methods. It reflects the supply chain of enterprises based on the development achievements of management ideas, management technology, computer technology. Successfully implement ERP, must pay attention to training, and training is not only a training of simple system operation. From the beginning of the implementation of the project, the corresponding training is always, phased, divided content, division personnel, hierarchical The system training is performed separately. Training must also have a complete training knowledge base to focus on scientific, effectiveness, practicality, stages, and hierarchy, and to unify employees with the aid of training methods, enhance management concepts and technical skills. Otherwise, the software is used, but employees may not be truly acceptable; the concept is accepted, data, and system may not be able to be in place. ERP is an overall management solution that prevents software from being ecommoding the software. Seventh, do a good job in BPR-business process restructuring. BPR has been called "the only way to restore US competitiveness", and BPR is the basis of successful implementation of ERP. Before the BPR is performed, all the processes must be checked from the non-efficient, whether there is reasonable perspective, and then regulate and adjust from unreasonable and efficient business processes. Due to the low management process, the production and sales cycle is long, the decision process is slow, so that the company cannot undertake a small number of orders, unable to undertake short-term orders, can not launch new products to adapt to market changes in time; more, there is a process error Loss, leading to management decision-making errors, improper stocks, improper procurement, re-repair, bad products, etc. BPR must follow the following principles: the supply chain design process, focus on overall process optimization, organize according to the flow, rather than the process, give full play to the role of each person in the overall process, using information technology to coordinate the dispersion and concentrated contradiction, Implementation from functions to business process management transformation.
Eighth, the update and implementation of the corporate rules and regulations. While implementing ERP, we must make reasonable adjustments and modifications to the company's previous institutions, so that it can act on the implementation of the project. In addition to the maintenance of hardware network facilities, the computer technicians are particularly important in time and update. For example, "ERP Enterprise Resource Management", "Computer Management Measures", "Computer Management Measures", and the issued "ERP Notice", the smooth implementation of Xi'an Railway Signal Plant ERP projects.
Ninth, decisive - based data preparation. After the entire goal is determined, there is a very important link, that is, the basic data is prepared. The previous basic data preparation is the key to ensuring the correct operation of the system. Many companies implement other systems often stagnate in this link, eventually leading to failure. Similarly, we have to see this link and call it a decisive battle.
The data of manufacturing companies is not only complex, but also in the start phase. These data include: customer data, supplier data, material data, product structure, process and process, etc., including inventory, customer orders, delivery, delivery, invoice, receivable, payment, etc. Dynamic data.
Tenth, strengthen progress control. ERP's implementation is generally divided into three phases: the previous period is mainly basic data preparation, standardization; the secondary handover face definition, business process restructuring; later is the implementation of the admission period, implement manual and computer parallel operation, gradually solve the original handmade operation to the computer The uncomfortability of the job. The implementation process includes project startup, forming a team, design, coding, testing, data preparation, software installation, software debugging, project trial operation, secondary development, project official operation, etc. At each stage, you need to be strongly promoted and coordinated by parties, otherwise there will be risk of interruption, delay, and super budget. There may be problems in the implementation process: forget expected goals, reduce the original goals in front of various interests and difficulties; projects may temporarily affect normal business, produce negative effects; unpredictability factors affect project processes, shake leadership . In response to the above cases, leaders must plan, will be determined, supervised, implement project management, timely communication, timely analysis of the causes of deviation, and actively seek countermeasures. Eleventh, select the breakthrough. The company's management change is not a chance, choose breakthrough, it is important to start, enterprises should be cautious, recognize the status, gradual, and easy to get difficult, can put "efficiency drive, overall planning, step-by-step implementation, key breakthrough" The policy of ERP project is implemented from the short-term easing to establish a confidence in success.
The above points are some of the main countermeasures in the implementation of the enterprise implementation of the ERP process, and it can be organically implemented to implement them, directly related to the success of ERP implementation.
Five, conclude
ERP has set off a revolution on managing ideas and management technology in China or the world. More worth noting is that before MPRII has not fully recognized by China's corporate sector, it has become an ERP under the e-commerce era in a short period of time. It can be seen that this new management method and management means is in full swing in Chinese companies in China, which is in full swing in China. It is undoubtedly injecting many companies that we struggle in the market economy tide. New blood. Therefore, in order to better master and use this revolutionary management tool, it is necessary to have a clear understanding of the difficulties and countermeasures in ERP implementation.
