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Trends in modern operations management
Edited by Ben Clegg, Jillian MacBryde and Prasanta Dey
1 Introduction
It is generally accepted that lean production improves manufacturing processes with the application of recognized tools and techniques, and equally assumed that contemporary enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are essential for companies seeking efficiencies through organizational integration. Traditionally, ERP systems have been implemented in order to integrate business processes and support managerial decision making. While the integration objective seems to fit with the holistic approach that is typical for lean, ERP systems have often been classed as sources of waste within lean production literature ([6] Bell, 2006; [11] Bruun and Mefford, 2004; [35] Hicks, 2007; [90] Sugimori et al. , 1977). For example, [74] Piszczalski (2000) describes manufacturers as being " torn between two opposing camps", and [32] Halgari et al. (2011) suggest that ERP systems have been considered a hindrance to lean manufacturing efforts and have been criticized for encouraging large inventories and slow production.
Based primarily on the working practices of the Toyota production system (TPS), lean production is an increasingly applied operations paradigm for enhancing production effectiveness. It can be described as both a philosophy and a set of tools and techniques that aim to systematically identify and eliminate all waste in processes, with an underlying vision of one-piece flow ([7] Bicheno and Holweg, 2009). Just-in-time (JIT) is a key area of the lean production paradigm, and has been one of the hottest research areas in operations management since the 1980s ([56] Matsui, 2007). [17] Cooney (2002) states that the importance of JIT flow is what is distinctive about the lean production concept, and that JIT is seen to be a superior value-adding practice. Lean has been described by [84] Shah and Ward (2003) as a collection of practice bundles, consisting of JIT, total quality management (TQM), total preventive maintenance (TPM), and human resource management (HRM). This is equivalent to the [81] Schonberger's (1986) concept of world class manufacturing.
ERP systems are commercial software packages that promise seamless integration of all information flowing through a company - financial, human resources, supply chain, and customer information ([19] Davenport, 1998). They are designed to provide the information backbone to cope with the complexities of modern business and the...