Maintaining ERP packaged software : a revelatory case study

For many organizations, maintaining and upgrading enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems (large packaged application software) is often far more costly than the initial implementation. Systematic planning and knowledge of the fundamental maintenance processes and maintenance-related management data are required in order to effectively and efficiently administer maintenance activities. This paper reports a revelatory case study of Government Services Provider (GSP), a high-performing ERP service provider to government agencies in Australia. GSP ERP maintenance-process and maintenance-data standards are compared with the IEEE/EIA 12207 software engineering standard for custom software, also drawing upon published research, to identify how practices in the ERP context diverge from the IEEE standard. While the results show that many best practices reflected in the IEEE standard have broad relevance to software generally, divergent practices in the ERP context necessitate a shift in management focus, additional responsibilities, and different maintenance decision criteria. Study findings may provide useful guidance to practitioners, as well as input to the IEEE and other related standards.

Engaging operations management students by designing the unit with industry focus

Operations management is an area concerned with the production of goods and services ensuring that business operations are efficient in utilizing resource and effective to meet customer requirements. It deals with the design and management of products, processes, services and supply chains and considers the acquisition, development, and effective and efficient utilization of resources. Unlike other engineering subjects, content of these units could be very wide and vast. It is therefore necessary to cover the content that is most related to the contemporary industries. It is also necessary to understand what engineering management skills are critical for engineers working in the contemporary organisations. Most of the operations management books contain traditional Operations Management techniques. For example ‘inventory management’ is an important topic in operations management. All OM books deal with effective method of inventory management. However, new trend in OM is Just in time (JIT) delivery or minimization of inventory. It is therefore important to decide whether to emphasise on keeping inventory (as suggested by most books) or minimization of inventory. Similarly, for OM decisions like forecasting, optimization and linear programming most organisations now a day’s use software. Now it is important for us to determine whether some of these software need to be introduced in tutorial/ lab classes. If so, what software? It is established in the Teaching and Learning literature that there must be a strong alignment between unit objectives, assessment and learning activities to engage students in learning. Literature also established that engaging students is vital for learning. However, engineering units (more specifically Operations management) is quite different from other majors. Only alignment between objectives, assessment and learning activities cannot guarantee student engagement. Unit content must be practical oriented and skills to be developed should be those demanded by the industry. Present active learning research, using a multi-method research approach, redesigned the operations management content based on latest developments in Engineering Management area and the necessity of Australian industries. The redesigned unit has significantly helped better student engagement and better learning. It was found that students are engaged in the learning if they find the contents are helpful in developing skills that are necessary in their practical life.

Triangular Linguistic Fuzzy based performance measurement model for supply chain to assess leanness attributes

Increasing global competitiveness worldwide has forced manufacturing organizations to produce high-quality products more quickly and at a competitive cost. In order to reach these goals, they need good quality components from suppliers at optimum price and lead time. This actually forced all the companies to adapt different improvement practices such as lean manufacturing, Just in Time (JIT) and effective supply chain management. Applying new improvement techniques and tools cause higher establishment costs and more Information Delay (ID). On the contrary, these new techniques may reduce the risk of stock outs and affect supply chain flexibility to give a better overall performance. But industry people are unable to measure the overall affects of those improvement techniques with a standard evaluation model .So an effective overall supply chain performance evaluation model is essential for suppliers as well as manufacturers to assess their companies under different supply chain strategies. However, literature on lean supply chain performance evaluation is comparatively limited. Moreover, most of the models assumed random values for performance variables. The purpose of this paper is to propose an effective supply chain performance evaluation model using triangular linguistic fuzzy numbers and to recommend optimum ranges for performance variables for lean implementation. The model initially considers all the supply chain performance criteria (input, output and flexibility), converts the values to triangular linguistic fuzzy numbers and evaluates overall supply chain performance under different situations. Results show that with the proposed performance measurement model, improvement area for each variable can be accurately identified.

Unpacking user relations in an emerging ubiquitous computing environment : introducing the bystander

The move towards technological ubiquity is allowing a more idiosyncratic and dynamic working environment to emerge that may result in the restructuring of information communication technologies, and changes in their use through different user groups' actions. Taking a ‘practice’ lens to human agency, we explore the evolving roles of, and relationships between these user groups and their appropriation of emergent technologies by drawing upon Lamb and Kling's social actor framework. To illustrate our argument, we draw upon a study of a UK Fire Brigade that has introduced a variety of technologies in an attempt to move towards embracing mobile and ubiquitous computing. Our analysis of the enactment of such technologies reveals that Bystanders, a group yet to be taken as the central unit of analysis in information systems research, or considered in practice, are emerging as important actors. The research implications of our work relate to the need to further consider Bystanders in deployments other than those that are mobile and ubiquitous. For practice, we suggest that Bystanders require consideration in the systems development life cycle, particularly in terms of design and education in processes of use.

Metal artifacts from titanium and steel screws in CT, 1.5T and 3T MR images of the tibial Pilon: A quantitative assessment in 3D

Radiographs are commonly used to assess articular reduction of the distal tibia (pilon) fractures postoperatively, but may reveal malreductions inaccurately. While Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Computed Tomography (CT) are potential 3D alternatives they generate metal-related artifacts. This study aims to quantify the artifact size from orthopaedic screws using CT, 1.5T and 3T MRI data. Three screws were inserted into one intact human cadaver ankle specimen proximal to and along the distal articular surface, then CT, 1.5T and 3T MRI scanned. Four types of screws were investigated: titanium alloy (TA), stainless steel (SS) (Ø = 3.5 mm), cannulated TA (CTA) and cannulated SS (CSS)(Ø = 4.0 mm, Ø empty core = 2.6 mm). 3D artifact models were reconstructed using adaptive thresholding. The artifact size was measured by calculating the perpendicular distance from the central screw axis to the boundary of the artifact in four anatomical directions with respect to the distal tibia. The artifact sizes (in the order of TA, SS, CTA and CSS) from CT were 2.0 mm, 2.6 mm, 1.6 mm and 2.0 mm; from 1.5T MRI they were 3.7 mm, 10.9 mm, 2.9 mm, and 9 mm; and 3T MRI they were 4.4 mm, 15.3 mm, 3.8 mm, and 11.6 mm respectively. Therefore, CT can be used as long as the screws are at a safe distance of about 2 mm from the articular surface. MRI can be used if the screws are at least 3 mm away from the articular surface except SS and CSS. Artifacts from steel screws were too large thus obstructed the pilon from being visualised in MRI. Significant differences (P < 0.05) were found in the size of artifacts between all imaging modalities, screw types and material types, except 1.5T versus 3T MRI for the SS screws (P = 0.063). CTA screws near the joint surface can improve postoperative assessment in CT and MRI. MRI presents a favourable non-ionising alternative when using titanium hardware. Since these factors may influence the quality of postoperative assessment, potential improvements in operative techniques should be considered.

Simulated systems optimization through response surface techniques [Optimización de sistemas simulados a través de técnicas de superficie de respuesta]

The purpose of this article is to show the applicability and benefits of the techniques of design of experiments as an optimization tool for discrete simulation models. The simulated systems are computational representations of real-life systems; its characteristics include a constant evolution that follows the occurrence of discrete events along the time. In this study, a production system, designed with the business philosophy JIT (Just in Time) is used, which seeks to achieve excellence in organizations through waste reduction in all the operational aspects. The most typical tool of JIT systems is the KANBAN production control that seeks to synchronize demand with flow of materials, minimize work in process, and define production metrics. Using experimental design techniques for stochastic optimization, the impact of the operational factors on the efficiency of the KANBAN / CONWIP simulation model is analyzed. The results show the effectiveness of the integration of experimental design techniques and discrete simulation models in the calculation of the operational parameters. Furthermore, the reliability of the methodologies found was improved with a new statistical consideration.