Design and maintenance concerns also arise when implementing EAM into an ERP environment,
specifically in large organizations operating multiple instances of ERP applications. EAM
functionality, by nature, must be integrated directly into the underlying programming code. Therefore,
a company utilizing more than one ERP would be forced to design, test, implement, and
maintain the EAM coding in each individual application thus consuming valuable resources. For
example, the continuous monitoring pilot project initiated by the Siemens Internal IT Audit Department
Alles et al. 2006; Alles et al. 2008 encompasses the audits of the SAP instances the
standard ERP companywide for all the operating companies located in the United States. For
Siemens, this would mean dealing with over 20 different SAP instances; one division alone,
Siemens Power Generation, operates three SAP instances with a development, testing, and pro-duction environment for each in addition to several sandboxes—all of which would require individual
maintenance of EAM code. For several reasons, including the ability to manage audits of
disparate systems located and maintained by distinct and separate IT organizations, the Siemens
project team chose to implement an MCL solution that could be controlled outside of the SAP
instances with feeds from those instances directly into the MCL application.