Description
At a time when many companies are embarking on enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementations, despite the belief among CEOs that approximately two-thirds of such systems are said to be failures, Texas Instruments’ (TI) multi-stakeholder ERP system offers many lessons for future adopters.
International Journal of Information Management 23 (2003) 431–442
Case study
Managing large-scale global enterprise resource planning
systems: a case study at Texas Instruments
$
Joseph Sarkis
a,
*, R.P. Sundarraj
b
a
Graduate School of Management, Clark University, Worcester, MA 01610, USA
b
Department of Management Sciences, University of Waterloo, 200 University Ave. West, Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1, USA
Abstract
At a time when many companies are embarking on enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementations,
despite the belief among CEOs that approximately two-thirds of such systems are said to be failures, Texas
Instruments’ (TI) multi-stakeholder ERP system offers many lessons for future adopters. A constancy of vision,
providing visibility of the ERP system to external constituents via Web linkages, and standardization of
internal processes and important information technology systems to support market needs, were the foundation
for the success of this implementation. In this paper, we detail the management of this implementation from a
process-oriented perspective. The lessons learned from this effort help to support and further the academic and
practitioner literature especially in the area of large-scale information systems management.
r 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Enterprise Resource Planning; Information Systems Implementation; Business Process Reengineering;
Electronic Commerce
1. Introduction
The jury is still out on the ef?cacy of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. On the one
hand, surveys (e.g., Cliffe, 1999) reveal that a remarkable 65% of executives believe that ERP
systems could be harmful, this perception being buttressed by speci?c examples of how poorly
implemented ERP systems have contributed to the bankruptcy of companies (e.g., Appleton,
1997). On the other, there is also evidence indicating the numerous tangible and intangible bene?ts
of ERPs. The purpose of this paper is to detail Texas Instruments’s (TI’s) large-scale global
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$
The authors are grateful to Phil Coup, TI Vice President and Open Systems Transition Manager, for enabling
access to the details provided in this case study.
*Corresponding author. Tel.: +1-508-793-7659; fax: +1-508-793-8822.
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (J. Sarkis), [email protected] (R.P. Sundarraj).
0268-4012/$ - see front matter r 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/S0268-4012(03)00070-7
Web-enabled ERP implementation that entailed a three-and-half-year effort and a $250 million
budget. The motivation for this implementation is aptly expressed by Pallab Chatterjee, TI’s
Senior Vice President and Chief Information Of?cer:
In today’s fast-paced, ever-changing Internet era, TI could no longer afford to have
information technology systems that could not be easily changed to meet customer and
business needs. The transition to open systems allows us the ?exibility to respond to changing
needs, capture new market opportunities, and realize our global processes and worldwide
integrated systems vision.
The goals of the effort are to:
*
evolve standardized processes that support market trends;
*
leverage e-commerce to link customers and suppliers to TI’s system; and
*
base the implementation on open hardware and software systems.
The ERP system is used by 10,000 TI employees, and handles over 45,000 products and 120,000
orders per month. Information for this case study was collected using: (i) a number of structured
interviews (including a face-to-face informal interview, a written interview, and an open-ended
interview); (ii) several telephone and email communications; (iii) ‘‘snowballing’’ sessions with
additional interviews with Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) personnel based on the
recommendation of the senior level executive; and (iv) archival information supplied by TI and
other, secondary, sources. We describe this implementation by utilizing the following process-
oriented framework adapted from the advanced manufacturing technologies literature (Meredith,
1987; Sarkis & Lin, 1994; Small & Yasin, 1997). Details are available in Sarkis and Sundarraj (2001).
*
Strategy formulation, in which the visions, goals and objectives of the organization are de?ned
and a technology strategy is adopted to ?t these goals.
*
Process Planning and Systems Design, in which processes are reengineered to meet business
objectives.
*
System evaluation and justi?cation, in which actual IT systems must be evaluated and justi?ed.
*
System con?guration, in which the system or the organizational process is con?gured to
produce an alignment between each other.
*
System implementation, in which actual implementation of the system takes place.
*
Post-implementation audit, in which we measure whether the goals set for the system have been
accomplished.
2. Process-oriented analysis of the TI case study
An overview of the implementation is given in Fig. 1. In this section, we describe the activities
that were undertaken by TI during each stage of the framework described in Section 1.
2.1. Strategy formulation
As discussed in Section 1, there were three elements to strategy formulation:
*
Identify and support market trends;
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*
Leverage the Web for external partners; and
*
Standardize information systems.
Market trends. TI began as a leader in the design and production of standardized digital TTL
(transistor-transistor logic) ‘‘commodity’’ products. However, this focus was challenged by the
evolution from a one-size-?ts-all market to one in which mass customization was being demanded
(Sinwell, 1997; Lavidge, 1999). TI re-focused the organization on the digital signal processing
(DSP) business, which called for the design and production of custom chips using application
speci?c integrated circuit (ASIC) methodology.
Further, TI had a number of customer needs that could not be met easily, because of disparate
systems. For example, a customer in Taiwan wanted to place all orders in California and would
allocate a worldwide destination for the ordered products only at the time of shipping. Other
customers wanted to place orders for complete sets of devices that all worked together. To ?t such
requests within the existing system, TI had to enter the order for each device separately, and then
use manual workarounds and interventions to synchronize the delivery of the complete system.
According to Phil Coup
1
:
‘‘we had customers tell us that if we couldn’t improve, then they were going to do business with
other suppliers. In some cases we were taking as long as 6 months to deliver products that our
best competitor can do in less than 30 days.’’
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1980
and
before
Jun
1996
Jun
1997
Jun
1999
Mar
2000
2000
Mainframe
computers
ERP process
started
ERP Goals
almost met
Standard
planning
systems policy
Nov
1998
Sep
1999
Jan
1999
ERP process
Switch from
Red Pepper to
i2 planning
system
Initial SAP
Modules -
On-line
Partial Mostly
Success Success
i2 planning
system
prototype
Final SAP
Modules -
On-line
August
1999
i2 planning
system on-
line
1989 1996
Fig. 1. Timeline of TI’s ERP implementation.
1
TI Vice President and Open Systems transition manager.
J. Sarkis, R.P. Sundarraj / International Journal of Information Management 23 (2003) 431–442 433
Thus, the goal was to determine the appropriate processes and information systems that needed
to be operational in order to support such agile design and manufacturing strategies (Peters &
Saidin, 2000).
Move toward supplier-managed inventory and customer-managed orders. Prior to 1996, TI
worked with its customers/suppliers using manual processes, or non-open systems such as
EDI. As a way to launch itself into the budding e-commerce era, a goal of the ERP system
was to leverage the capabilities of the Internet to provide visibility of its systems to its
customers and suppliers so that the management of such external organizations can be done
inexpensively.
Standardize systems. Unlike a number of organizations whose business units could be on
incompatible systems, TI’s strategy was to ensure standardization of its systems as much as
possible. Speci?c areas such as factory automation were, of course, left to use custom solutions,
but other areas such as planning were required to be on standardized open systems in order to
support the two goals identi?ed above.
Part of TI’s strategic management and development process was to make sure that metrics were
used to manage the project. TI is a metrics-driven organization, where strategic goals and
objectives are translated into tactical and operational metrics, and such a fact-based management
approach kept clarity in the direction and managed the scope of the project.
2.2. Process planning and systems engineering
By using its key business managers as well as noted outside consultants, TI conducted a massive
reengineering effort for the whole organization with the goal of setting standard processes
globally. The major result was to prescribe global management of inventory and manufacturing
processes, and thereby discontinue the practice of earmarking a production lot for speci?c
customers (e.g., orders could be received in US, replenished from Europe and shipped to Asia).
Such a process change would save on capacity, reduce inventory and would turn more output into
revenue, since it would not require a separate lot to be started in the US. In addition to process
issues, there were problems with the information systems arising from the thousands of programs
in use at that time and from the proliferation of stand-alone systems. Thus a proposal for an ERP
system was made to the president and other key managers.
Unlike most organizations, TI decided to implement a single-instance ERP system to fully
leverage the system’s capabilities to support the ?exibility and standardization demanded by
global processes. After site visits by major ERP vendors, TI selected SAP primarily because of its
scalability to handle voluminous amounts of data. Yet, questionnaires with hundreds of questions
were given to the vendors and evaluated by the implementation team before ?nal selection
was made.
2.3. System justi?cation
A budget of approximately $250 million was set for the implementation. The justi?cation of the
system was completed using a combination of tangible and intangible factors at both the
enterprise and business-unit levels. Standard hard-justi?cation measures such as ROI and IRR
were used to ensure the ?nancial viability of the project. Global capacity utilization as a result of
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the ERP system was also projected, keeping in mind that such projections were only guidelines
and could get offset or boosted as a result of other continuous-improvement activities that were
ongoing in the company. These estimates ranged from 3–5% output improvements based on
current assets, which although seemingly small, amounted to increased pro?t of several hundred
million dollars. Additional tangible and intangible reasons were:
*
TI’s proprietary-mainframe-based ordering was incompatible with the goal of moving toward a
web-based model;
*
TI had thousands of programs that incurred huge maintenance costs;
*
Accurate global inventory was not possible without a ‘‘single-instance’’ ERP system; and
*
An ERP system would facilitate in cycle-time reduction, which would help TI compete
effectively in the custom DSP market.
In summary, according to Phil Coup:
At the enterprise level it is more like ‘you have obsolete plumbing and wiring in your house, and
you are going to have to replace it. And, therefore, you need to do something new.’ From a
business perspective, it boils down to having key business managers say: ‘it is obvious we need
to do this, we are going to get bene?ts and we are going to have huge risks if we don’t ?x the
plumbing and wiring in our house. So, whether you think that these bene?t numbers are right
or not, whether you think it is a bit more or a bit less, it is still a good decision.’ A lot of the
intangibles came into play.
2.4. System con?guration
The goals and processes outlined above are fairly easy to state, but they entailed a number of
dif?cult changes at the detailed level. A few examples now follow.
Business process examples. First, the number of levels of approval on a purchase order was
standardized at four (there were some countries which had ?fteen levels). Second, authorization
amounts were standardized according to the level of the concerned person in the organization.
These two examples are a direct result of TI wanting to limit the amount of customization of the
software package to a minimum, realizing the cost of customization and the chain reaction that
could get set off by business units following one another in demanding customization. As Mitch
Cline, the Andersen Consulting management partner in this project stated:
yif at any point the planned change in the business process (due to software requirements) was
to have a negative impact on a process, it had to be signi?cant for the software to be
customized. It could not be ‘‘we don’t like’’ itythe justi?cation had to be signi?cant, it would
have to degrade service to the customer or increase cost to the business, not a slight
productivity dipya good example of one such justi?cation, if we can’t do supplier managed
inventory like the automotive guys like to do it and it’s going to cause a burden on these
customersyit had to had to impact the customer or it had to take away capability that would
drive up costy
Technical example. One of the consequences of global inventory was that the number of a given
part must be the same in all the regions of the world. An 18-character part number became an
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agreed upon standard. This standardization involved a huge IS and business effort because
changes had to be made to the databases, programs supported by them, and some manufacturing
procedures in addition to having to communicate the changes to the customers.
Cultural example. All systems were mandated to be in English, except for customer-
speci?c information such as addresses used for external communication with them. That is,
if some element of the system is meant for global usage, then it shall be communicated in
English.
2.5. Implementation
In this phase, concepts and goals must be translated into tangible action, and as a result, it is
perhaps one of most dif?cult phases of the project. We describe three subphases of the
implementation: startup, project management, and going live.
Start up. Unlike many organizations in which the IT departments have to ‘‘sell’’ the
implementation of new technologies to business managers, IT projects at TI are initiated and
driven by the business units. Given this corporate culture, it is imperative to have the concurrence
of business managers on the design and implementation of the ERP system. Thus, a number of
key personnel, along with their families, were expatriated to the US and stationed in Dallas for a
few years.
Second, about 250 people were transitioned from TI to Andersen Consulting (i.e., put on
Andersen’s payroll), which became the main provisioner of services with respect to the ERP
system. This transition was completed after numerous discussions with business leaders and
business teams. IT outsourcing in this case involved Andersen Consulting taking over the
employment and management of former TI people.
Project management. TI adopted a number of different approaches to handle change
management. First, CEO’s of the solution providers (Sun, SAP, etc.) met with TI’s IT and
business leaders, and sometimes with the president on a quarterly basis. Second, people from
other companies that have been through ERP implementation were brought in to relate their
experiences. Third, leadership teams were de?ned for people who were leading key implementa-
tion areas for their business units, and executive teams oversaw the performance of the leadership
teams with respect to change management. Finally, a process was established to handle problems
that arose.
*
On-site experts were made available to new users of the system;
*
A help desk was set up to handle problems that could not be addressed by these experts; and
*
A ticketing system for managing and prioritizing problems was also established (e.g., a system
stop was a high-priority ticket that would get round-the-clock attention).
In summary, the goal was to handle a problem at the lowest possible level, without magnifying
it and ‘‘sending it up the management chain’’.
As stated earlier, in addition to SAP, TI used another package for performing advanced
planning. Initially, a package named Red Pepper was selected for this purpose. However, after
the implementation began Red Pepper was purchased by PeopleSoft a company that specializes
in human-resources software. Its capabilities leveled off, whereas those of another package
called i2 kept increasing and became dominant in the marketplace. Thus, TI did a major and
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critical mid-course change of switching from Red Pepper to i2 advanced planning system software
application.
Handling go-live. To get prepared for ‘‘go-live’’, the key managers who were stationed in Dallas
were sent back to their territories for educating the next level of users. Using selected experts, user-
acceptance scripts were de?ned and tested, with problems, if any, being resolved as per one of the
schemes outlined above. Daily conference calls were set up for 30 days prior to go-live to obtain
status checks on progress and on the tickets.
Based on the results of these checks, a risk analysis was conducted weekly to determine the
effects of various potential failures. The implementation plan was to have a few go-live dates one
after another, but in relatively quick succession. For each of these events, a ‘‘war room’’ was
formed and it had up to 500 people that included TI’s employees in addition to consultants from
Andersen, Sun, SAP, i2, Oracle and other suppliers. The ?rst stage of going live was a prototype
of the planning system, the second stage involved the ?rst major modules of SAP (?nance and
procurement), the third stage was to switch over to the global planning system with i2 (TI still had
the legacy systems in operation), and the ?nal stage was to implement sales, logistics and
marketing systems. Except for the planning system, all other stages were implemented using a
direct conversion
2
. That is, with a downtime of about 2–3 h during a weekend, the old system was
turned off and the new one turned on.
2.6. Post-audit implementation
The assessment of the implementation is discussed in detail in the next section.
3. Results of implementation
The system met most of its goals 9 months after the complete implementation, although
there were some problems immediately after the implementation. Response time for the
system exceeded expectations, with 90% of the transactions worldwide getting a response
within 3 s. There are around 13,000 users (10,000 TI+3000 outside) on the system, with
concurrent users ranging from 300 to 1700. The integrated system allowed TI to better
manufacture and deliver its 120,000 orders per month involving 45,000 devices. Some key
occurrences are as follows.
Productivity dip. Because of learning-curve effects, there was an initial period of reduced
productivity. TI anticipated and planned for such an occurrence and discussed with Andersen
methods to ameliorate this problem.
Ontime delivery. TI was not hitting its goal of on-time delivery. However, this problem could
not all be attributed to the systems alone. Because of market conditions, businesses were able to
book more orders than they can deliver, and were as a result, falling short of capacity.
Single-instance, global system. The success of the single-instance, integrated, global model has
fundamentally transformed how business is conducted at TI. It has allowed the company to have
actions taken in, say, the US and determine impact on other parts of the world.
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2
Since planning was critical, the old and new systems ran in parallel for some time to provide the needed con?dence.
J. Sarkis, R.P. Sundarraj / International Journal of Information Management 23 (2003) 431–442 437
Better response. Because of its web capability of the system, over 70% of TI’s external
transactions were conducted electronically. TI’s worldwide external constituents include
distributors, customers, suppliers, and ?eld-sales people. This faster, easier-to-use process
reduced order-management costs for customers by allowing access to all orders, and providing
access to real-time global information using open and non-TI-speci?c systems.
Inventory reduction. Although it is still fairly early in the process of such a sweeping institutional
change, it is not too soon to state that the project is helping those it was designed to help. For
example, a few months after startup, some TI factories reported output increases of 5–10%, and
up to 15% reduction in work-in-process inventory.
According to Phil Coup,
‘‘We are now truly operating as a global company. We now have one customer backlog, one
global planning system optimizing how global capacity is used and daily access to global
business information via our Intranet Web portal.’’
4. Managerial implications
The case study described in Section 3 offers a number of lessons for managing ERP systems. In
this section, we examine the extent to which these lessons are grounded to the research literature.
4.1. Lessons
Conduct a thorough strategic plan. This case illustrates how market forces compelled TI to make
radical shifts to its business. TI’s strategic response to these changes identi?ed ?exibility and time
(speed) as the key strategic performance metrics that had to be stressed in order be competitive in
the DSP business.
Align IT plans with business’. TI found that to support its global inventory model it needed to
have an integrated information system (i.e., ERP). Further, to best align IT with the business, the
ERP system would have to be a single-instance one. Multi-instance systems that require batching
or other forms of integration mechanisms would be insuf?cient for TI’s purpose.
Get top management support. TI’s President Rich Templeton and the Chairman of TI’s Board
communicated the importance and status in their quarterly satellite broadcasts to the company.
The president considered a successful ERP implementation to be one of ?ve strategic goals for the
organization, and followed through with the goal by sitting in on quarterly meetings. He explicitly
lent his support to the standardization of the business processes, stating:
if somebody does not want to use [the] standard and wants to customize it, [he/she] needs to see
me personally and explain to me why they were going to make more pro?t by doing that.
Change management. Researchers have often attributed many implementation problems to
users’ resistance to change. They need to address issues related to:
*
User expectation—TI illustrated how, instead of increased ef?ciency, there was a productivity
dip for an initial time period as a result of time lost in learning the new system. TI anticipated it
and planned for it by setting expectations accordingly;
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*
User involvement—with TI, to provide a chance for greater involvement during dif?cult
periods, TI provided an increased frequency of such communications as the project approached
its ?nal stages;
*
User satisfaction—TI established a ticketing system and web-based user groups to help support
users’ problems.
Champion characteristics. In TI’s situation, the manager of the ERP project had over two
decades of experience at various levels of the organization. As manager of several businesses
(product families) within TI, he had broad process knowledge as well as technical knowledge
related to enterprise-wide open systems. He had both the credibility and expertise to lead the
project.
Rationalize business models and processes. Since time and ?exibility were the strategic goals of
TI, a global inventory system along with its accompanying models and process was the rational
choice.
Consider intangible bene?ts. An example of intangible leveraged by TI is the linking of the ERP
system to web. This enabled 3000 customers and suppliers to connect to the system.
Build budgetary slack. In TI’s case, the switch-over from Red Pepper and the temporary hold-
off on i2’s implementation are examples that highlight the importance of budgetary slacks.
Contingency budgetary planning may reduce the political issues relating to increased ?nancial
expenses that may label the project as a ‘‘black hole’’ or failure.
Make mid-course changes when needed. As exempli?ed by the i2 implementation in this case,
parallel piloting was not central to the full ERP system, but was deemed necessary for that risky
module.
Manage external enterprises. Appropriate and well-planned involvement of consultants is
important for keeping the project on a tight schedule. Further, with the advent of e-commerce,
companies are more likely to ship and order goods on the basis of web-based inputs.
Manage using metrics. TI and Andersen Consulting have a corporate culture and policy that
requires the stringent and formal use of metrics in the management and evaluation of projects.
They attribute this policy adherence as one of the key reasons for success of the ERP
implementation.
4.2. Summary
Fig. 2 categorizes the lessons learned into two dimensions, and it can serve as a guideline that
future implementers can adapt to their situation. First, we separate lessons with strong literature
support from those with partial support. It is noteworthy to mention that even those with strong
support tend to get ignored during the ‘‘rush’’ of the implementation process. A classic case is the
involvement of top management (Jarvenpaa & Ives, 1991).
A notable lesson with limited literature support concerns the leveraging of the system to utilize
emerging e-commerce technologies, thereby providing better management of customers and
suppliers. Other such lessons include the need to make modi?cation to plans, as needed, to ensure
project success. This lesson is especially important, because of the numerous business and
technological changes that can likely occur during the inordinately long life-cycle of an ERP
project.
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Further, as the project progresses along its life-cycle, different lessons have differing degrees of
impact and would involve different levels of personnel. Thus, in our second dimension, we classify
lessons according to the process-oriented framework used in Section 1. For example, TI’s
experience suggests that to align an IT plan with that of the business plan, the guidance and
support of senior management is critical and that too in the early stages of the project.
5. Conclusions
In this paper, we have utilized a process-oriented framework to describe the implementation of
TI’s single-instance, global ERP system that sought to: (i) standardize processes and information
systems; (ii) integrate manufacturing, procurement and logistics to support market trends; and
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Literature
Support
Continuum of
Strategy to Implementation
Lesson Learned
[Bracketed Numbers are example
references of issue]
Key Supporting instance from TI
Champion Characteristics [9] IT and business experience of champion
PARTIAL
Make Mid-Course Changes when Needed Changed from Red Pepper to i2
Budget appropriately Budgeted for delays and changes
Manage External Enterprises [18] 70% of external transaction are electronic
Conduct a Thorough Strategic Plan Moved from "commodity" to DSP business
Align IT Plans with Business [8,25] Single-instance ERP to support global
inventory
Get Top Management Support [16,22] President regularly sat in meetings
STRONG
Change Management [4,5,11,13, 14, 17,20] Transported key "process owners" (users)
Rationalize Business Models and Processes
[2,28,30]
Decided on global inventory model
Consider Intangible Benefits [6] E-commerce links to customers and suppliers
Manage Using Metrics [1,10,12] Used productivity and utilization metric
Planning
Stage
-- Critical
-- Very Important
-- Important
LEGEND:
Fig. 2. Summary of lessons learned (Adams, Sarkis, & Liles, 1995; Aharoni & Burton, 1994; Baronas & Louis, 1988;
Baroudi, Olson, & Ives, 1986; Beatty & Gordon, 1988; Davenport, 1998; Dean, 1987; Deming, 1986; Davis & Bostrom,
1993; Dixon, Nanni, & Vollman, 1990; Ginzburg, 1981; Goodman & Grif?th, 1991; Joshi, 1991; Kalakota & Whinston,
1996; Lucas, 1978; Reich & Benbasat, 2000; Selig, 1982; Stevens, 1997).
J. Sarkis, R.P. Sundarraj / International Journal of Information Management 23 (2003) 431–442 440
(iii) provide visibility to suppliers and customers via the web. Despite numerous challenges (e.g.,
national and cultural differences, reconciliation of business processes and unanticipated mid-
course changes), TI went through its implementation that lasted over 3 years and received a
nomination for the ComputerWorld Smithsonian Award for its efforts. The response time of the
system is under 3 s 90% of the time, and with 10,000 registered internal users, 3000 registered
external users, 120,000 orders and 45,000 devices, although it should be pointed out that there
were some initial dips in productivity and on-time delivery. The lessons learned include those that
are suggested in the research literature but often ignored in practice, as well as new ones (see Fig. 2).
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Meredith, J. (1987). Manufacturing factory automation projects. Journal of Manufacturing Systems, 6(2), 75–91.
Peters, L., & Saidin, H. (2000). IT and the mass customization of services: The challenge of implementation.
International Journal of Information Management, 20(2), 103.
Reich, B., & Benbasat, I. (2000). Factors that in?uence the social dimensions of alignment between business and
information technology objectives. MIS Quarterly, 24(1), 81–113.
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Sarkis, J., & Lin, L. (1994). A general IDEF0 model for the strategic implementation of CIM systems. International
Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing, 7(2), 100–115.
Sarkis, J., & Sundarraj, R. P. (2001). A decision model for strategic evaluation of enterprise information technologies.
Information Systems Management, 18, 62–72.
Selig, G. (1982). Approaches to strategic planning for information resource management (IRM) in multinational
companies. MIS Quarterly, 6, 33–35.
Small, M., & Yasin, M. (1997). Developing a framework for the effective planning and implementation of advanced
manufacturing technology. International Journal of Operations and Production Management, 17(5/6), 468–489.
Stevens, T. (1997). Kodak focuses on ERP. Industry Week, 246(15), 130.
Joseph Sarkis is currently a Professor in The Graduate School of Management at Clark University. He earned his Ph.D.
from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He has published over 150 articles in a variety of publication outlets.
He also serves on the editorial boards of a number of journals.
R.P. Sundarraj is an Associate Professor of Information Systems at the University of Waterloo. He has a B.S. in
Electrical Engineering from the University of Madras, India and a Ph.D. in Management Science from the University of
Tennessee. His interests are in the areas of information technology management, operational modeling, and computer
solutions for large-scale systems. He has consulted for Fortune 100 companies on the development of decision support
and other software systems for materials and marketing management.
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doc_990657899.pdf
At a time when many companies are embarking on enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementations, despite the belief among CEOs that approximately two-thirds of such systems are said to be failures, Texas Instruments’ (TI) multi-stakeholder ERP system offers many lessons for future adopters.
International Journal of Information Management 23 (2003) 431–442
Case study
Managing large-scale global enterprise resource planning
systems: a case study at Texas Instruments
$
Joseph Sarkis
a,
*, R.P. Sundarraj
b
a
Graduate School of Management, Clark University, Worcester, MA 01610, USA
b
Department of Management Sciences, University of Waterloo, 200 University Ave. West, Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1, USA
Abstract
At a time when many companies are embarking on enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementations,
despite the belief among CEOs that approximately two-thirds of such systems are said to be failures, Texas
Instruments’ (TI) multi-stakeholder ERP system offers many lessons for future adopters. A constancy of vision,
providing visibility of the ERP system to external constituents via Web linkages, and standardization of
internal processes and important information technology systems to support market needs, were the foundation
for the success of this implementation. In this paper, we detail the management of this implementation from a
process-oriented perspective. The lessons learned from this effort help to support and further the academic and
practitioner literature especially in the area of large-scale information systems management.
r 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Enterprise Resource Planning; Information Systems Implementation; Business Process Reengineering;
Electronic Commerce
1. Introduction
The jury is still out on the ef?cacy of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. On the one
hand, surveys (e.g., Cliffe, 1999) reveal that a remarkable 65% of executives believe that ERP
systems could be harmful, this perception being buttressed by speci?c examples of how poorly
implemented ERP systems have contributed to the bankruptcy of companies (e.g., Appleton,
1997). On the other, there is also evidence indicating the numerous tangible and intangible bene?ts
of ERPs. The purpose of this paper is to detail Texas Instruments’s (TI’s) large-scale global
ARTICLE IN PRESS
$
The authors are grateful to Phil Coup, TI Vice President and Open Systems Transition Manager, for enabling
access to the details provided in this case study.
*Corresponding author. Tel.: +1-508-793-7659; fax: +1-508-793-8822.
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (J. Sarkis), [email protected] (R.P. Sundarraj).
0268-4012/$ - see front matter r 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/S0268-4012(03)00070-7
Web-enabled ERP implementation that entailed a three-and-half-year effort and a $250 million
budget. The motivation for this implementation is aptly expressed by Pallab Chatterjee, TI’s
Senior Vice President and Chief Information Of?cer:
In today’s fast-paced, ever-changing Internet era, TI could no longer afford to have
information technology systems that could not be easily changed to meet customer and
business needs. The transition to open systems allows us the ?exibility to respond to changing
needs, capture new market opportunities, and realize our global processes and worldwide
integrated systems vision.
The goals of the effort are to:
*
evolve standardized processes that support market trends;
*
leverage e-commerce to link customers and suppliers to TI’s system; and
*
base the implementation on open hardware and software systems.
The ERP system is used by 10,000 TI employees, and handles over 45,000 products and 120,000
orders per month. Information for this case study was collected using: (i) a number of structured
interviews (including a face-to-face informal interview, a written interview, and an open-ended
interview); (ii) several telephone and email communications; (iii) ‘‘snowballing’’ sessions with
additional interviews with Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) personnel based on the
recommendation of the senior level executive; and (iv) archival information supplied by TI and
other, secondary, sources. We describe this implementation by utilizing the following process-
oriented framework adapted from the advanced manufacturing technologies literature (Meredith,
1987; Sarkis & Lin, 1994; Small & Yasin, 1997). Details are available in Sarkis and Sundarraj (2001).
*
Strategy formulation, in which the visions, goals and objectives of the organization are de?ned
and a technology strategy is adopted to ?t these goals.
*
Process Planning and Systems Design, in which processes are reengineered to meet business
objectives.
*
System evaluation and justi?cation, in which actual IT systems must be evaluated and justi?ed.
*
System con?guration, in which the system or the organizational process is con?gured to
produce an alignment between each other.
*
System implementation, in which actual implementation of the system takes place.
*
Post-implementation audit, in which we measure whether the goals set for the system have been
accomplished.
2. Process-oriented analysis of the TI case study
An overview of the implementation is given in Fig. 1. In this section, we describe the activities
that were undertaken by TI during each stage of the framework described in Section 1.
2.1. Strategy formulation
As discussed in Section 1, there were three elements to strategy formulation:
*
Identify and support market trends;
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J. Sarkis, R.P. Sundarraj / International Journal of Information Management 23 (2003) 431–442 432
*
Leverage the Web for external partners; and
*
Standardize information systems.
Market trends. TI began as a leader in the design and production of standardized digital TTL
(transistor-transistor logic) ‘‘commodity’’ products. However, this focus was challenged by the
evolution from a one-size-?ts-all market to one in which mass customization was being demanded
(Sinwell, 1997; Lavidge, 1999). TI re-focused the organization on the digital signal processing
(DSP) business, which called for the design and production of custom chips using application
speci?c integrated circuit (ASIC) methodology.
Further, TI had a number of customer needs that could not be met easily, because of disparate
systems. For example, a customer in Taiwan wanted to place all orders in California and would
allocate a worldwide destination for the ordered products only at the time of shipping. Other
customers wanted to place orders for complete sets of devices that all worked together. To ?t such
requests within the existing system, TI had to enter the order for each device separately, and then
use manual workarounds and interventions to synchronize the delivery of the complete system.
According to Phil Coup
1
:
‘‘we had customers tell us that if we couldn’t improve, then they were going to do business with
other suppliers. In some cases we were taking as long as 6 months to deliver products that our
best competitor can do in less than 30 days.’’
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1980
and
before
Jun
1996
Jun
1997
Jun
1999
Mar
2000
2000
Mainframe
computers
ERP process
started
ERP Goals
almost met
Standard
planning
systems policy
Nov
1998
Sep
1999
Jan
1999
ERP process
Switch from
Red Pepper to
i2 planning
system
Initial SAP
Modules -
On-line
Partial Mostly
Success Success
i2 planning
system
prototype
Final SAP
Modules -
On-line
August
1999
i2 planning
system on-
line
1989 1996
Fig. 1. Timeline of TI’s ERP implementation.
1
TI Vice President and Open Systems transition manager.
J. Sarkis, R.P. Sundarraj / International Journal of Information Management 23 (2003) 431–442 433
Thus, the goal was to determine the appropriate processes and information systems that needed
to be operational in order to support such agile design and manufacturing strategies (Peters &
Saidin, 2000).
Move toward supplier-managed inventory and customer-managed orders. Prior to 1996, TI
worked with its customers/suppliers using manual processes, or non-open systems such as
EDI. As a way to launch itself into the budding e-commerce era, a goal of the ERP system
was to leverage the capabilities of the Internet to provide visibility of its systems to its
customers and suppliers so that the management of such external organizations can be done
inexpensively.
Standardize systems. Unlike a number of organizations whose business units could be on
incompatible systems, TI’s strategy was to ensure standardization of its systems as much as
possible. Speci?c areas such as factory automation were, of course, left to use custom solutions,
but other areas such as planning were required to be on standardized open systems in order to
support the two goals identi?ed above.
Part of TI’s strategic management and development process was to make sure that metrics were
used to manage the project. TI is a metrics-driven organization, where strategic goals and
objectives are translated into tactical and operational metrics, and such a fact-based management
approach kept clarity in the direction and managed the scope of the project.
2.2. Process planning and systems engineering
By using its key business managers as well as noted outside consultants, TI conducted a massive
reengineering effort for the whole organization with the goal of setting standard processes
globally. The major result was to prescribe global management of inventory and manufacturing
processes, and thereby discontinue the practice of earmarking a production lot for speci?c
customers (e.g., orders could be received in US, replenished from Europe and shipped to Asia).
Such a process change would save on capacity, reduce inventory and would turn more output into
revenue, since it would not require a separate lot to be started in the US. In addition to process
issues, there were problems with the information systems arising from the thousands of programs
in use at that time and from the proliferation of stand-alone systems. Thus a proposal for an ERP
system was made to the president and other key managers.
Unlike most organizations, TI decided to implement a single-instance ERP system to fully
leverage the system’s capabilities to support the ?exibility and standardization demanded by
global processes. After site visits by major ERP vendors, TI selected SAP primarily because of its
scalability to handle voluminous amounts of data. Yet, questionnaires with hundreds of questions
were given to the vendors and evaluated by the implementation team before ?nal selection
was made.
2.3. System justi?cation
A budget of approximately $250 million was set for the implementation. The justi?cation of the
system was completed using a combination of tangible and intangible factors at both the
enterprise and business-unit levels. Standard hard-justi?cation measures such as ROI and IRR
were used to ensure the ?nancial viability of the project. Global capacity utilization as a result of
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the ERP system was also projected, keeping in mind that such projections were only guidelines
and could get offset or boosted as a result of other continuous-improvement activities that were
ongoing in the company. These estimates ranged from 3–5% output improvements based on
current assets, which although seemingly small, amounted to increased pro?t of several hundred
million dollars. Additional tangible and intangible reasons were:
*
TI’s proprietary-mainframe-based ordering was incompatible with the goal of moving toward a
web-based model;
*
TI had thousands of programs that incurred huge maintenance costs;
*
Accurate global inventory was not possible without a ‘‘single-instance’’ ERP system; and
*
An ERP system would facilitate in cycle-time reduction, which would help TI compete
effectively in the custom DSP market.
In summary, according to Phil Coup:
At the enterprise level it is more like ‘you have obsolete plumbing and wiring in your house, and
you are going to have to replace it. And, therefore, you need to do something new.’ From a
business perspective, it boils down to having key business managers say: ‘it is obvious we need
to do this, we are going to get bene?ts and we are going to have huge risks if we don’t ?x the
plumbing and wiring in our house. So, whether you think that these bene?t numbers are right
or not, whether you think it is a bit more or a bit less, it is still a good decision.’ A lot of the
intangibles came into play.
2.4. System con?guration
The goals and processes outlined above are fairly easy to state, but they entailed a number of
dif?cult changes at the detailed level. A few examples now follow.
Business process examples. First, the number of levels of approval on a purchase order was
standardized at four (there were some countries which had ?fteen levels). Second, authorization
amounts were standardized according to the level of the concerned person in the organization.
These two examples are a direct result of TI wanting to limit the amount of customization of the
software package to a minimum, realizing the cost of customization and the chain reaction that
could get set off by business units following one another in demanding customization. As Mitch
Cline, the Andersen Consulting management partner in this project stated:
yif at any point the planned change in the business process (due to software requirements) was
to have a negative impact on a process, it had to be signi?cant for the software to be
customized. It could not be ‘‘we don’t like’’ itythe justi?cation had to be signi?cant, it would
have to degrade service to the customer or increase cost to the business, not a slight
productivity dipya good example of one such justi?cation, if we can’t do supplier managed
inventory like the automotive guys like to do it and it’s going to cause a burden on these
customersyit had to had to impact the customer or it had to take away capability that would
drive up costy
Technical example. One of the consequences of global inventory was that the number of a given
part must be the same in all the regions of the world. An 18-character part number became an
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agreed upon standard. This standardization involved a huge IS and business effort because
changes had to be made to the databases, programs supported by them, and some manufacturing
procedures in addition to having to communicate the changes to the customers.
Cultural example. All systems were mandated to be in English, except for customer-
speci?c information such as addresses used for external communication with them. That is,
if some element of the system is meant for global usage, then it shall be communicated in
English.
2.5. Implementation
In this phase, concepts and goals must be translated into tangible action, and as a result, it is
perhaps one of most dif?cult phases of the project. We describe three subphases of the
implementation: startup, project management, and going live.
Start up. Unlike many organizations in which the IT departments have to ‘‘sell’’ the
implementation of new technologies to business managers, IT projects at TI are initiated and
driven by the business units. Given this corporate culture, it is imperative to have the concurrence
of business managers on the design and implementation of the ERP system. Thus, a number of
key personnel, along with their families, were expatriated to the US and stationed in Dallas for a
few years.
Second, about 250 people were transitioned from TI to Andersen Consulting (i.e., put on
Andersen’s payroll), which became the main provisioner of services with respect to the ERP
system. This transition was completed after numerous discussions with business leaders and
business teams. IT outsourcing in this case involved Andersen Consulting taking over the
employment and management of former TI people.
Project management. TI adopted a number of different approaches to handle change
management. First, CEO’s of the solution providers (Sun, SAP, etc.) met with TI’s IT and
business leaders, and sometimes with the president on a quarterly basis. Second, people from
other companies that have been through ERP implementation were brought in to relate their
experiences. Third, leadership teams were de?ned for people who were leading key implementa-
tion areas for their business units, and executive teams oversaw the performance of the leadership
teams with respect to change management. Finally, a process was established to handle problems
that arose.
*
On-site experts were made available to new users of the system;
*
A help desk was set up to handle problems that could not be addressed by these experts; and
*
A ticketing system for managing and prioritizing problems was also established (e.g., a system
stop was a high-priority ticket that would get round-the-clock attention).
In summary, the goal was to handle a problem at the lowest possible level, without magnifying
it and ‘‘sending it up the management chain’’.
As stated earlier, in addition to SAP, TI used another package for performing advanced
planning. Initially, a package named Red Pepper was selected for this purpose. However, after
the implementation began Red Pepper was purchased by PeopleSoft a company that specializes
in human-resources software. Its capabilities leveled off, whereas those of another package
called i2 kept increasing and became dominant in the marketplace. Thus, TI did a major and
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critical mid-course change of switching from Red Pepper to i2 advanced planning system software
application.
Handling go-live. To get prepared for ‘‘go-live’’, the key managers who were stationed in Dallas
were sent back to their territories for educating the next level of users. Using selected experts, user-
acceptance scripts were de?ned and tested, with problems, if any, being resolved as per one of the
schemes outlined above. Daily conference calls were set up for 30 days prior to go-live to obtain
status checks on progress and on the tickets.
Based on the results of these checks, a risk analysis was conducted weekly to determine the
effects of various potential failures. The implementation plan was to have a few go-live dates one
after another, but in relatively quick succession. For each of these events, a ‘‘war room’’ was
formed and it had up to 500 people that included TI’s employees in addition to consultants from
Andersen, Sun, SAP, i2, Oracle and other suppliers. The ?rst stage of going live was a prototype
of the planning system, the second stage involved the ?rst major modules of SAP (?nance and
procurement), the third stage was to switch over to the global planning system with i2 (TI still had
the legacy systems in operation), and the ?nal stage was to implement sales, logistics and
marketing systems. Except for the planning system, all other stages were implemented using a
direct conversion
2
. That is, with a downtime of about 2–3 h during a weekend, the old system was
turned off and the new one turned on.
2.6. Post-audit implementation
The assessment of the implementation is discussed in detail in the next section.
3. Results of implementation
The system met most of its goals 9 months after the complete implementation, although
there were some problems immediately after the implementation. Response time for the
system exceeded expectations, with 90% of the transactions worldwide getting a response
within 3 s. There are around 13,000 users (10,000 TI+3000 outside) on the system, with
concurrent users ranging from 300 to 1700. The integrated system allowed TI to better
manufacture and deliver its 120,000 orders per month involving 45,000 devices. Some key
occurrences are as follows.
Productivity dip. Because of learning-curve effects, there was an initial period of reduced
productivity. TI anticipated and planned for such an occurrence and discussed with Andersen
methods to ameliorate this problem.
Ontime delivery. TI was not hitting its goal of on-time delivery. However, this problem could
not all be attributed to the systems alone. Because of market conditions, businesses were able to
book more orders than they can deliver, and were as a result, falling short of capacity.
Single-instance, global system. The success of the single-instance, integrated, global model has
fundamentally transformed how business is conducted at TI. It has allowed the company to have
actions taken in, say, the US and determine impact on other parts of the world.
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2
Since planning was critical, the old and new systems ran in parallel for some time to provide the needed con?dence.
J. Sarkis, R.P. Sundarraj / International Journal of Information Management 23 (2003) 431–442 437
Better response. Because of its web capability of the system, over 70% of TI’s external
transactions were conducted electronically. TI’s worldwide external constituents include
distributors, customers, suppliers, and ?eld-sales people. This faster, easier-to-use process
reduced order-management costs for customers by allowing access to all orders, and providing
access to real-time global information using open and non-TI-speci?c systems.
Inventory reduction. Although it is still fairly early in the process of such a sweeping institutional
change, it is not too soon to state that the project is helping those it was designed to help. For
example, a few months after startup, some TI factories reported output increases of 5–10%, and
up to 15% reduction in work-in-process inventory.
According to Phil Coup,
‘‘We are now truly operating as a global company. We now have one customer backlog, one
global planning system optimizing how global capacity is used and daily access to global
business information via our Intranet Web portal.’’
4. Managerial implications
The case study described in Section 3 offers a number of lessons for managing ERP systems. In
this section, we examine the extent to which these lessons are grounded to the research literature.
4.1. Lessons
Conduct a thorough strategic plan. This case illustrates how market forces compelled TI to make
radical shifts to its business. TI’s strategic response to these changes identi?ed ?exibility and time
(speed) as the key strategic performance metrics that had to be stressed in order be competitive in
the DSP business.
Align IT plans with business’. TI found that to support its global inventory model it needed to
have an integrated information system (i.e., ERP). Further, to best align IT with the business, the
ERP system would have to be a single-instance one. Multi-instance systems that require batching
or other forms of integration mechanisms would be insuf?cient for TI’s purpose.
Get top management support. TI’s President Rich Templeton and the Chairman of TI’s Board
communicated the importance and status in their quarterly satellite broadcasts to the company.
The president considered a successful ERP implementation to be one of ?ve strategic goals for the
organization, and followed through with the goal by sitting in on quarterly meetings. He explicitly
lent his support to the standardization of the business processes, stating:
if somebody does not want to use [the] standard and wants to customize it, [he/she] needs to see
me personally and explain to me why they were going to make more pro?t by doing that.
Change management. Researchers have often attributed many implementation problems to
users’ resistance to change. They need to address issues related to:
*
User expectation—TI illustrated how, instead of increased ef?ciency, there was a productivity
dip for an initial time period as a result of time lost in learning the new system. TI anticipated it
and planned for it by setting expectations accordingly;
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*
User involvement—with TI, to provide a chance for greater involvement during dif?cult
periods, TI provided an increased frequency of such communications as the project approached
its ?nal stages;
*
User satisfaction—TI established a ticketing system and web-based user groups to help support
users’ problems.
Champion characteristics. In TI’s situation, the manager of the ERP project had over two
decades of experience at various levels of the organization. As manager of several businesses
(product families) within TI, he had broad process knowledge as well as technical knowledge
related to enterprise-wide open systems. He had both the credibility and expertise to lead the
project.
Rationalize business models and processes. Since time and ?exibility were the strategic goals of
TI, a global inventory system along with its accompanying models and process was the rational
choice.
Consider intangible bene?ts. An example of intangible leveraged by TI is the linking of the ERP
system to web. This enabled 3000 customers and suppliers to connect to the system.
Build budgetary slack. In TI’s case, the switch-over from Red Pepper and the temporary hold-
off on i2’s implementation are examples that highlight the importance of budgetary slacks.
Contingency budgetary planning may reduce the political issues relating to increased ?nancial
expenses that may label the project as a ‘‘black hole’’ or failure.
Make mid-course changes when needed. As exempli?ed by the i2 implementation in this case,
parallel piloting was not central to the full ERP system, but was deemed necessary for that risky
module.
Manage external enterprises. Appropriate and well-planned involvement of consultants is
important for keeping the project on a tight schedule. Further, with the advent of e-commerce,
companies are more likely to ship and order goods on the basis of web-based inputs.
Manage using metrics. TI and Andersen Consulting have a corporate culture and policy that
requires the stringent and formal use of metrics in the management and evaluation of projects.
They attribute this policy adherence as one of the key reasons for success of the ERP
implementation.
4.2. Summary
Fig. 2 categorizes the lessons learned into two dimensions, and it can serve as a guideline that
future implementers can adapt to their situation. First, we separate lessons with strong literature
support from those with partial support. It is noteworthy to mention that even those with strong
support tend to get ignored during the ‘‘rush’’ of the implementation process. A classic case is the
involvement of top management (Jarvenpaa & Ives, 1991).
A notable lesson with limited literature support concerns the leveraging of the system to utilize
emerging e-commerce technologies, thereby providing better management of customers and
suppliers. Other such lessons include the need to make modi?cation to plans, as needed, to ensure
project success. This lesson is especially important, because of the numerous business and
technological changes that can likely occur during the inordinately long life-cycle of an ERP
project.
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Further, as the project progresses along its life-cycle, different lessons have differing degrees of
impact and would involve different levels of personnel. Thus, in our second dimension, we classify
lessons according to the process-oriented framework used in Section 1. For example, TI’s
experience suggests that to align an IT plan with that of the business plan, the guidance and
support of senior management is critical and that too in the early stages of the project.
5. Conclusions
In this paper, we have utilized a process-oriented framework to describe the implementation of
TI’s single-instance, global ERP system that sought to: (i) standardize processes and information
systems; (ii) integrate manufacturing, procurement and logistics to support market trends; and
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Literature
Support
Continuum of
Strategy to Implementation
Lesson Learned
[Bracketed Numbers are example
references of issue]
Key Supporting instance from TI
Champion Characteristics [9] IT and business experience of champion
PARTIAL
Make Mid-Course Changes when Needed Changed from Red Pepper to i2
Budget appropriately Budgeted for delays and changes
Manage External Enterprises [18] 70% of external transaction are electronic
Conduct a Thorough Strategic Plan Moved from "commodity" to DSP business
Align IT Plans with Business [8,25] Single-instance ERP to support global
inventory
Get Top Management Support [16,22] President regularly sat in meetings
STRONG
Change Management [4,5,11,13, 14, 17,20] Transported key "process owners" (users)
Rationalize Business Models and Processes
[2,28,30]
Decided on global inventory model
Consider Intangible Benefits [6] E-commerce links to customers and suppliers
Manage Using Metrics [1,10,12] Used productivity and utilization metric
Planning
Stage
-- Critical
-- Very Important
-- Important
LEGEND:
Fig. 2. Summary of lessons learned (Adams, Sarkis, & Liles, 1995; Aharoni & Burton, 1994; Baronas & Louis, 1988;
Baroudi, Olson, & Ives, 1986; Beatty & Gordon, 1988; Davenport, 1998; Dean, 1987; Deming, 1986; Davis & Bostrom,
1993; Dixon, Nanni, & Vollman, 1990; Ginzburg, 1981; Goodman & Grif?th, 1991; Joshi, 1991; Kalakota & Whinston,
1996; Lucas, 1978; Reich & Benbasat, 2000; Selig, 1982; Stevens, 1997).
J. Sarkis, R.P. Sundarraj / International Journal of Information Management 23 (2003) 431–442 440
(iii) provide visibility to suppliers and customers via the web. Despite numerous challenges (e.g.,
national and cultural differences, reconciliation of business processes and unanticipated mid-
course changes), TI went through its implementation that lasted over 3 years and received a
nomination for the ComputerWorld Smithsonian Award for its efforts. The response time of the
system is under 3 s 90% of the time, and with 10,000 registered internal users, 3000 registered
external users, 120,000 orders and 45,000 devices, although it should be pointed out that there
were some initial dips in productivity and on-time delivery. The lessons learned include those that
are suggested in the research literature but often ignored in practice, as well as new ones (see Fig. 2).
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Joseph Sarkis is currently a Professor in The Graduate School of Management at Clark University. He earned his Ph.D.
from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He has published over 150 articles in a variety of publication outlets.
He also serves on the editorial boards of a number of journals.
R.P. Sundarraj is an Associate Professor of Information Systems at the University of Waterloo. He has a B.S. in
Electrical Engineering from the University of Madras, India and a Ph.D. in Management Science from the University of
Tennessee. His interests are in the areas of information technology management, operational modeling, and computer
solutions for large-scale systems. He has consulted for Fortune 100 companies on the development of decision support
and other software systems for materials and marketing management.
ARTICLE IN PRESS
J. Sarkis, R.P. Sundarraj / International Journal of Information Management 23 (2003) 431–442 442
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