ERP and Information Systems

Introduction

The evolution of enterprise resource planning (ERP) packages and the principal types or degrees of information systems (ISs) integration is to be discussed in this introduction. The factors affecting the relationships between the evolution of ERP packages and the integration or the disintegration of the ISs are also discussed.

After the first expansion, between 1980 and 2000, from “material requirements planning (MRP)” and “manufacturing resource planning (MRP II)” toward “enterprise resource planning (ERP)” considering the modules like production planning, purchasing, manufacturing, sales, distribution, accounting and human resources [ESC 99], a second evolution seems to be in progress. In order to meet the new requirements of users, it is important to take into account the framework of the ERP, new modules like “customer relationship management (CRM)”, e-business, “supply chain management (SCM)”, “product lifecycle management (PLM)”, “business intelligence (BI)”, etc. For the purpose of our research, the package which is the result of the first expansion is termed “ERP 1st Generation (1st G)” and the package that is the result of the second evolution is called “ERP 2nd Generation (2nd G).”

Various authors have written about the degree and the maturity of “information system (IS)” integration. Depending on the architecture’s composition, many degrees or rates of IS integration are present today. Our study draws attention to two principal types or degrees of IS integration: ...