A BPR plus QMS Concept for SME's ERP System Implementation-An Empirical Case in Taiwan

Due to the intensive competition, the implementation of a good IT (information technology) tool can help to improve the competence of the small and medium enterprise (SME). Under such an emerging paradigm of IT-based business management, to establish an effective and efficient management information system (MIS) becomes a popular trend for SMEs all over the world. Among those various information systems, ERP (enterprise resource planning) is recognized as one the most useful tools for businesses today. This article will share an enterprise's experiences in systematically implementing an ERP system in Taiwan. In this empirical project, the case company conducted an industry-academic cooperation on BPR+QMS for ERP implementation. During the First stage of this project, case company's overall operation activities were reviewed and processes within individual department /among different departments were re-designed. At the Second stage, some ERP software solutions were evaluated under some criteria (functions, cost, implementation schedule.., and so on) decided by industry-academic work force team. A full-function ERP software was chosen for case company's daily operations. At the Third stage, following with those above two main tasks, our project applied the designed structure of ISO 9001:2008 QMS to establish a quality management system (QMS) to help the implementation and future maintenance of its ERP system. From this empirical case, such a BPR-QMS-ERP project helped case company became a full-ERP-functioned company with sales/ distribution/ research & development/ production/ procurement/ human resource activities, and some helpful operational procedures were developed to guide those daily tasks. From BPR to standard operational procedures' establishment, experience gathering from this empirical case may be served as an effective and efficient practice to introduce and implement IT tool for business.