Development of an Enterprise Resource Planning System Essay

Riordan Manufacturing Inc. is a global plastics manufacturer that was founded in 1991 and employs 550 muckle. They prevail since expanded to three locations in the U. S. and one in china. Due to these expansions the confederacy is now experiencing communication and processing issues. Each system ineluctably to be connected to the others in order to improve the spread alone overing and productivity as fountainhead as communication between systems. We get down been asked to develop a proposal to implement a system to connect all told of the people and locations into one enterprise system that lead give the comp all admission to knowledge from any location at any time.This document covers our plan to achieve this refinement for Riordan Manufacturing Inc. Statement of Scope and Goals Riordan Manufacturing has requested that an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) be developed and apply in the San Jose, California Albany, Georgia Pontiac, Michigan and Hangzhou, China office s. The goal of this ERP project is to stream line the manufacturing, distribution, and inventory officeulatement systems crossways all plants and to use just now one system. The newly proposed system volition give Riordan Manufacturing a wealth of opportunity to grow its business and go on the customers that it has already.The new system will assist the company in obtaining the goals that it has plant forth with in its missions statement by providing solutions for its customers. Each of the four Riordan Manufacturing offices is utilizing diametric software programs to manage their manufacturing, distribution, and inventory. This type of environments provides very little functionality. The efficiency of this is a desire overwhelming because each plant in essence is not communicating with each other over one system. each of this makes it difficult to jumper cable accurately inventory, generate meaningful reports, respond to the culture requests from stakeholders, and to mak e all important(p) decisions. Riordan Manufacturing needs an integrated solution that will provide real-time access to data for reporting, inventory, and distribution. The scope of the project is as follows * A document that identifies particularised modeling of the software that the company wishes to be implemented across the notice as well as its dates for execution and go live plan. exposit project plan to monitor lizard and track the progress of the capital punishment * A communication plan so that status, up advent regular(a)ts, milestones, and other general in stimulateation tail be shared with the project team up as well as the stakeholders. * Risk assessment in order to identify any issues that may arise with out the project and have a contingency plan established before these issues arise. * An easy to use finish drug user environment will be implemented. * All modules of the ERP system will be tested prior to writ of execution* End users will be trained in the use of the system and all modules before implementation. adept and end user documentation will be created and finalized before implementation. * impact and procedural documentation will be created and finalized before implementation * All maintenance and support responsibilities will be assigned to those who will manage after implementation We will withal hold a post implementation meetings and have evaluate the project implementation prior to the occlude of the project (Apollo Group, 2012). Support Measures for achievement We believe it is important to track achievement in steps.We will be using Microsoft Project as a project management tool. This will give us the ability to track costs, labor, time and resources to check up on that the project is going as planned and also to know if there are any issues in any of these areas. Our goal is to bring the project in on time and within reckon while still meeting all of the getments for a successful implementation. Success is an ongoing goal and the focus of measure needs to be interpreted even after the project has been absolute to unsure that choices make during the implementation still producing profit.Changes made need to be made during the support phase angle if additional functionality is undeniable. Adding much locations or applications to the system may also require altering the measurement standards of success. Summary of Project Feasibility To go through the feasibleness of this project a number of factors must be considered, the first world the economic feasibility. Economic feasibility takes into consideration the boilersuit cost of implementation and maintenance of the ERP system. It asks the questions of rather there be any cost nest egg through implementation of an ERP?Can be ERP increase the revenue for Riordan? And over time, will investment into the ERP decrease (OBrien & Marakas, 2009)? In general, it must justify that the overall cost of the ERP give an adequate return of investm ent (ROI) back to Riordan (Motiwalla & Thompson, 2009). adjoining operational feasibility is looking at rather Riordans understructure can currently handle the demands of an ERP system. Then if not, changes are going to have to be made to those systems some that the implemented ERP can operate successfully.Also, it looks at the proposed ERP and rather it fits the business model of Riordan (OBrien & Marakas, 2009). Finally, technical feasibility has to be looked at, to chance if current technology can solve the problems address by Riordan (Motiwalla & Thompson, 2009). Proposed Systems Requirements dip Some of the system requirements needed to improve the functionality of Riordans raw framework and finished product tracking process are as follows (OBrien & Marakas, 2009) * unify the process at all facilities to track raw material coming into them.So purchasing can order material in a more efficient manner. * Unify the process at all facilities to monitor the production levels at each plant so management and gross sales can plan future strategies. * Unify the process at all facilities to give real-time inventory control so management can better plan and coordinate inventory control. Determination of Requirements The aspects that will ensure the information required for this project is gathered successfully are well-educated who should be involved, what questions to ask, formulating a plan, and deciding on the rule of delivery.Every stakeholder needs to be set and contacted for needed user requirements. Once the stakeholders have been identified creating a be given of questions needing to be answered will assist in supplying and determining the delivery method. Stakeholders can review the questions prior to their monthly stakeholder meeting. The disparate types of deliveries are system notice, interviews, questionnaires, document review, or Joint exertion development (JAD) sessions. Information pull together techniques will be used to determine the users needs.establish on these needs the appropriate ERP system can be anatomyed and implemented. The following techniques will be used to gather information needed on the current process system observation, interviews, questionnaires, document review, and Joint Application Development (JAD) sessions. Because much of the manufacturing, distribution, and inventory management are gathered through manual process, a system observation and interviews will be handled all at once to document the entire process and system passim each location.Observing system usage will give slap-up insight into who is using the system and how they are using it. System observation includes manual processes such as comparing exile documents to scheduled orders receiving report. Stakeholders to be contacted for requirements will be limited to the following roles with Riordan Manufacturing element of order shipping team, member of sales segment, member of manufacturing team, truck drivers, shipping area supervisor, member of receiving area team, receiving clerk, and inventory clerk. A questionnaire is a cost-effective way of gathering additional supporting information.This method of gathering requirements will be used for truck drivers because they are on the road. The use of an online format for the questionnaires to be completed will be the most successful. During the system observation, interview, and questionnaire phase a list of current documents used will be compiled. These examples will be reviewed for information needed for the proposed ERP system. Prototyping Another popular method uses documentation but at a high level and combines with a process of rapid design and testing of a working model of a solution. This method is called prototyping.This method is very beneficial because it allows the users and stakeholders to externalize how their requirements will be used to earn the system process. Taking the high level requirements and turning it into a user interface that i s visual to the user and is a working prototype to see how it will flow. This allows for interaction and can turn some requirements into different solutions and determine which requirements are mandatory and which ones are going to be optional. It provides a more real feel for what the system process will look like and allows for visual confirmation that this is what the company is looking for (Owens, 2009).List of Confirmed Requirements As it stands now the companies most sophisticated location is the San Jose office. The ERP that is residing in that location should be adapted throughout each other location. Along with this the installation of a VoIP system which will allow for a more flowing form of vocal communication between the company and its customers. It also allows the sales team or anyone who is outside the office to connect and accept phone calls even when not on site. All of the locations should have a software arouse from the current to Microsoft Office 2010.Access poi nts should be installed so that each department sees only the information that is necessary for their use. This access should only be granted through the technical IT staff after world approved by their specific supervisor. All of the operating systems should be upgraded to Windows 7 because of the smooth use with all of its programs. Reporting should be done every using SQL or Microsoft Access to allow for customized reporting and integration of reports made for each department (Apollo Group, 2012).