A planning and management infrastructure for large, complex, distributed projects—beyond ERP and SCM

Abstract

Enterprises which are distributed in space and/or which are composed as a temporary joint venture of legally different units recently often called virtual (extended) enterprises. Planning, design and operation (management) goals and requirements of such firms are generally different from those of single, centralized enterprises. The basic feature of an extended (virtual) enterprise is that the co-operating units of it keep their independence during the life-cycle of the co-operation-what is well regulated by the rules of the given conglomerate. It has to be accepted-on the other hand-that several basic functionalities and goals are the same for all types of distributed, large, complex organizations, which are the targets of our recent study.The evolution of web-based manufacturing design/planning and operation system philosophies can be followed through the works presented in this paper. We intend to give software solutions for design, planning and operation (management) of complex, networked organizations represented as nodes of networks. In the first part of the paper, solutions are given to manage complex logistics flows of distributed SMEs, giving more sophisticated solutions than the commonly used supply-chain management (SCM) packages available in the market. The second problem we solve is a complex, web-based solution to manage large, expensive, multi-site, multi-company projects using any type of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and flow management solutions. Our goal is to integrate as many available solutions as possible and to make only the appropriate frameworks including decision-support systems where necessary. The first part of the work means the establishment and application of a web server at each node of the co-operating network, while the second approach uses only one, joint web server and each node communicates with it through the network. These architectures are easy to be integrated if needed, i.e. logistic flows and project management can be solved together. #

Institutional isomorphism and the adoption of information technology for supply chain management

“…The management of these processes requires close collaboration between different parties in a supply chain (SC), e.g., raw materials suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, and retailers, to attain the ultimate goal of satisfying customer requirements and reducing costs.To ensure that items are delivered on time and to the right place at a low cost, it is most desirable to use information technology (IT) to trace and track the status of the item flows and support the associated information interchange in a supply chain [4,9]. Before embarking on any IT initiatives for SCM, it is important to consider the diffusion, market acceptance, and legitimacy of IT in SCs to facilitate and support trading and communication among the supply chain partners to ensure its effective implementation.…”

Challenges of Cost Management in Complex Projects

“…Without earlier experience from similar projects, the managers and controllers of a project cannot anticipate when and where project cost overruns are likely to occur. Those challenges were also recognized by Kovács and Paganelli (2003), who stated that the activities of complex projects are usually geographically distributed and activities are performed in unprepared or even hostile environments. Those "unprepared or hostile environments" in combination with the technically large scope create challenges for commissioning -which was also recognized as www.ccsenet.org/ijbm International Journal of Business and Management Vol.…”

“…A complex and distributed project organization increases the complexity of the cost structure, which causes challenges in detecting potential or actual cost overruns (Kovács & Paganelli, 2003). Intra-organizational transactions also required more delicate margin calculation and a wider cost control.…”

Meta-design for agile concurrent product design in the virtual enterprise

“…A review of the literature has identified the need for many ICT systems, procedures and standards to be implemented within a virtual enterprise in order to increase the effectiveness of collaboration. The main emphasis of the research lies with the interoperability between platforms, that is: ensuring that companies using different internal systems for their design and other business operations can exchange data seamlessly between the two [17], [18].…”