Delft University of Technology
Faculty Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering
Transport Technology



L. Wang Management Information Systems in an Organization
Masters thesis, Report 2004.TL.6908, Transport Engineering and Logistics / Industrial Organisation.


This master thesis mainly aims to find out whether there are mismatches between ERP systems and different organizational types at operational level, and what root causes of those mismatches are, if there are.

On basis of those objectives, types of industrial organization and the modeling methodology of organization systems are firstly analyzed and described from a system perspective. The BaanERP system, as a representative of existing ERP systems, is then examined by using the system approach.

By examining the modeling process and methodology of the BaanERP system, it is found that the design of the BaanERP system starts from a process point of view. This is a typical monodisciplinary design approach.

Being built on such a single and process design approach, the BaanERP system runs into several confrontations with its user organizations.

Firstly, a confrontation exists between high requirements from users on the flexibility of their installed ERP systems and the rigid structure of the BaanERP system.

Secondly, terminological confusions are aroused due to such a monodisciplinary approach.

Finally, decomposition by using subsystem approach makes ERP system lose the overview on the two flow elements during the course of design process.

In order to solve those identified confrontations, we propose an interdisciplinary and functional oriented design approach for the design of the BaanERP system in the future. Besides that, the PROPER model is suggested to be a generic reference model for conducting such a functional and interdisciplinary design approach.

In this thesis, the study is limited in examining the BaanERP system from a products flow and a partial orders flow aspects. Other aspects like resources flow and financial flow, etc. have not been touched. In the future, a more panoramic view could be taken to examine the performance of ERP systems.

The followings are the conclusions drawn in this thesis:


Reports on Transport Engineering and Logistics (in Dutch)
Modified: 2005.11.29; logistics@3mE.tudelft.nl , TU Delft / 3mE / TT / LT.