An organization’s aim is dependent on its setup principles and its mission. But all
organizations have to be effective and efficient. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
was born to be the infrastructure for helping organizations for their endless study to
achieve this aim.
Implemention of ERP systems is a problematic process. ERP system is a well
prepared suit, but this suit may not fit every organization. Thus, ERP software has to be
flexible enough to meet the organization’s requirements. ERP software consists of two
major parts; program and database. Flexibility issue relies on both of these components.
ERP software, first of all, should have a flexible database design, then, an interface that
implements that design. Therefore, database design is crucial for flexibility of ERP
software.
In this thesis, a two-phased case study is constructed to identify the
implementation problems that arise from inflexible structure of database design. In the
first phase of the case study, a database design has been done according to the specific
needs of an industry. Then, the designed system has been implemented to a different
industry to observe implementation problems. Analysis of implementation problems has
been done. Extra data requirement problems are observed.
Afterwards, two database design alternatives have been proposed in order to have a
flexible structure for ERP software. Discussion of both of the alternatives has been done.
First alternative has been utilized by major ERP vendors in a similar way. The
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implementation problems determined in the case study is also evaluated according to
database design alternatives.
In this thesis, it is observed that the generic database design steps should be
extended to evaluate the flexibility requirements. Importance of flexibility in the
construction of new ERP software is emphasized in this thesis. Implementation diversity
is inevitable; therefore, flexibility is mandatory for ERP software.
One possible future work may be evaluating the flexibility by object oriented
databases. This thesis is based on a relational database system. When commercial object
oriented databases would have been used for ERP systems then flexibility requirements
would have been considered.
Another future work may be using XML data sets for “metadata” of ERP
databases. Metadata for extra data requirements would be analyzed by adding extra
definition lines or creating new XML files.