Implementing enterprise resource planning systems with total quality control and business process reengineering Survey results

The primary objective of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is to help integrate an organization’s business operations and processes effectively and efficiently. Not all firms have been successful in their ERP implementations and to that end research has helped to identify many factors that might be critical to a successful implementation. Such factors as the use of business process reengineering (BPR), and establishing a total quality management (TQM) culture have all shown to play important roles in ERP implementation. The focus of this survey research on US electronic manufacturing firms is to identify successful integration sequences of TQM and BPR with ERP. The findings reveal that both the sequence of implementation and the strategies selected to initiate ERP systems can significantly impact business performance successfulness. Introduction A family of software packages used to integrate business organizations with one another is called enterprise resource planning (ERP) (Chase et al., 2001, pp. 420-30; Wallace, 2001). ERP has had a positive impact on the ability of businesses to improve working capital, implement a total quality management (TQM) culture, lower inventory levels, optimize raw materials and sell and deliver products to the customers (Shtub, 1999). ERP has helped alleviate the arduous job of supporting inflexible systems that in most cases result in cost increases, data redundancy and inaccuracy, and above all, various inefficiencies (O’Leary, 2000). Ideally, ERP is a computer system that keeps managers informed about what is happening in real-time throughout a corporation and its global connections (Jacobs and Whybark, 2000). The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister http://www.emeraldinsight.com/0144-3577.htm