Developing Complex Information Systems from Standard Software Components: A Case Study within Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP II)

At our research institute, we explored to what extent it is possible to build complex applications with standard software. Using Microsoft Office packages we established an MRP II-system which contains all important modules. For small to medium-sized enterprises (SME) it might be an alternative to today’s planning systems, most of which focusing on organizing and supervising complex manufacturing processes with many options for tuning and adaptation. In this aspect our system is lean and particularly well suited for SME. We describe our engineering concept and present the architecture of our prototype. A balance of standard functions which were used, on the one hand, and functions which had to programmed individually, on the other hand, is discussed. Furthermore, we summarize strengths and weaknesses of our approach, including results of performance tests and adaptations to specific business processes. Finally, we specify the concept of a component configurator which composes an MRP IIsystem from enterprise-type-specific building blocks.