A study on performance of introducing ERP to semiconductor related industries in Taiwan

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) has become critical to enhancing the competitiveness of the semiconductor industry in Taiwan by applying information technology to integrate internal information as well as external service capability of an enterprise to increase the flow speed and values and reduce the costs of human and managerial resources, manufacturing, management, and marketing. The success of ERP implementation depends on several factors, such as space, time, location, industry, and the like. It is critically important to collect information on the successful factors of ERP implementation and evaluate the performance of ERP in semiconductor-related industries in Taiwan. A statistical method based on Parasuraman et al. was applied to ERP implementation by providing a pair of performance indices, i.e., action and importance. In addition, a performance evaluation matrix, originally proposed by Lambert and Sharman, was revised to set up a standard by providing performance upper and lower control limits with the emphases of the Taguchi method and Shewhart control charts. Finally, quality function deployment (QFD) was used to remedy the weaknesses and develop corporate strategies to improve the ERP implementation. The major advantage of this proposed integrated approach is to evaluate the success of the implementation for a new system quickly at low cost. More importantly, by examining action and importance indices, the enterprise can decide how the resources should be deployed effectively and efficiently to further improve the ERP implementation.