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TopEvolution Of Systems To Support Business Management.
Technology has always been a success key factor for Enterprises; consequently, managers attempt to include it in their business process as soon as it becomes available. In this vein, ERP systems were not the exception, and they have evolved along time, including certain technologies which facilitate reaching their goals. This technological evolution was identified by (Delsart & Nieuwenhuysen, 2011) and (Bepi, 2008) with some differences. The first authors identified three major periods, and the second one was more specific and identified six periods, furthermore they mentioned features that characterize such periods.
Figure 1
introduces a view of ERP evolution, on the horizontal axis there is a timeline that starts at the 50th – 60th decade and a vertical axis for the complexity evolution, this last one indicates when a certain feature was introduced. During the first three decades, there was a sort of legacy ERP system called Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP), it evolved from simply stock and order managing toward Enhancement, and Forecasting, it is relevant to take into account that in those years the cost of computers and system still represented a high cost (Schreyer, 2002) for enterprises. Consequently, in those years small and medium size companies could not take advantage of such technologies.
Key Terms in this Chapter
MRP or Manufacturing Resource Planning: Information system used for planning manufacturing activities, including raw material, activities, among others.
Knowledgebase: Different to a database, it enables the organization of information in a way that makes possible information interpretation to get knowledge.
Tagging: In information system and Semantic Web it consists in adding a significant term to pieces of information or documents.
Ontology: Ontology is defined as a specification of a conceptualization, in other words, an ontology contains a clear definition of a terminology in a way that can be used by computers for information exchange.
Semantic Web: A new kind of Web which enable adding semantic to data available on the Internet, making it more understandable for networks of computers.
ERP or Enterprise Resource Planning: Information System that integrates enterprise information workflow, including buying, selling, stock, among others.