eThesis - School of Business electronic theses

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Objectives of the Study The goal of the research is to design a method to assess the scope and the extent of change for implementing Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES). On the one hand, the study has elicited a set of business requirements to delineate the scope of implementation. On the other hand, the study has assessed the extent of change within the scope by detecting the inertness that the management should resolve in a social-technical system that comprises the organization, new technology and legacy enterprise information system.

Academic background and methodology Change takes place in the work system of a company when implementing MES. Before planning any change, the management should assess the change based on the business requirements of a new work system, in which MES come into use. Clearly identified requirements enable the management to plan and direct the change process to ensure a success MES implementation. However, failure rate of implementing new Information System is high in practice. Researchers have ascribed various failures of IS implementation to the vagueness of requirements. Early before planning implementation in detail, the management should first determine what requirements are essential for realizing the business value of a new information technology. This study assessed the scope of change through requirements elicitation with Critical Success Chain (CSC) method. The study has adapted and operationalized the CSC method in a single case, to demonstrate the method. The case has shown the efficacy and applicability of the method. Further, the study has developed the general CSC method by incorporating a diagnostic guideline to assess the extent of a technochange.

Findings and conclusions The research has described and framed the problem of assessing changes for implementing MES as requirements elicitation and inertness identifying. Then the study developed a method combining the CSC and Sarker's Guideline. Moreover, the study has found that MES implementation had better go injunction with manufacturing operation improvement. At last, the demonstrational case is able to show that MES implementation focus could have diverge on different products in a company's product portfolio.