Enterprise resource planning systems (ERPs) are now being implemented in small and medium enterprises (SMEs). In addition to allowing for the integration of technological architectures, these systems make best practices available to small firms. This paper presents the results of a study that was aimed at identifying the dimensions of SMEs’ readiness for the adoption of this new technology.

Kenneth H. Cohn, MD, FACS, Chief Executive Officer, HealthcareCollaboration.com, Natick, Massachusetts; Joel Berman, MD, Chief Medical Information Officer, Concord Hospital, Concord, New Hampshire; Barry Chaiken, MD, founder, DocsNetwork.com, Boston; David Green, MD, Chief Medical Officer, Concord Hospital; Michael Green, FACHE, Chief Executive Officer, Concord Hospital; Deane Morrison, RPh, Ch...

ADOPT and BnB-ADOPT are two related algorithms essential for distributed constraint optimization. They exchange a large number of messages, which is a major drawback for their practical usage. Aiming at increasing their efficiency, we present results showing that some of their messages are redundant so they can be removed without compromising their optimality and termination properties. Removin...

Distributed constraint optimization problems can be solved by BnBADOPT$^+$, a distributed asynchronous search algorithm. In the centralized case, local consistency techniques applied to constraint optimization have been shown very beneficial to increase performance. In this paper, we combine BnB-ADOPT$^+$ with different levels of soft arc consistency, propagating unconditional deletions caused ...

Several distributed constraint reasoning algorithms employ Depth First Search (DFS) trees on the constraint graph that spans involved agents. In this article we show that it is possible to dynamically detect a minimal DFS tree, compatible with the current order on agents, during the distributed constraint reasoning process of the ADOPT algorithm. This also allows for shorter DFS trees during th...

This paper examines the pros and cons of the recent proposal that Argentina should adopt the US dollar as its official currency, rather than have a currency board system in which the units of domestic currency issued are backed “one-to-one” by dollar reserves. The motivation for adopting the dollar seems to be that it could guarantee credibility in monetary policy and eliminate the risk premium...

We have found that some messages of BnB-ADOPT are redundant. Removing most of those redundant messages we obtain BnB-ADOPT, which achieves the optimal solution and terminates. In practice, BnBADOPT causes substantial reductions on communication costs with respect to the original algorithm. BnB-ADOPT (Yeoh, Felner, and Koenig 2008) is a reference algorithm for distributed constraint optimization...