Hello Walter,
Agreed. I guess I haven't made it Clear enough. ERP can be used in Organizations and certain process which are repetetive.
We have several components in Construction Projects or Project Management.
When you consider those aspects - HR, Finance (costs), Logistics are both part of Organization & Project.
So, We can have HR, Finance and logistics using ERP which will be the input for Project management (to see where we are on the project - one can call it Progress measurement, project status, or forecast )
I believe that's how it should be done to make it work for us. Well, the idea is to make the system work for us.
No system is 100% I agree . but while other systems such as Manufacturing , Logistics, warehouse management, HR are repetitive processes.
Construction is not. (Yes , ERP can be used in inventory, finance, rentals)
Biggest ERP clients are Car manufacturers, F&B industries, Hospitality sector, Healthcare and they're trying to fit in - deployment is a year or year and half to say the least .
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Kalyan Emandi
Sr.Project Engineer
Senegal
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Original Message:
Sent: 02-16-2019 20:23
From: Walter Tack
Subject: Adoption of ERP in Construction Companies-Project Management
Clearly allowances and adjustments need to be made with any management system when adopted to a new industry. Construction poses additional problems because of the many stakeholders (subcontractors and suppliers) as well as challenges such as one of a kind projects and varying weather and site conditions. However, to say that it is the fact that construction involves people and therefore cannot use ERP, is way off the mark. As far as I know there is no industry that is 100% managed and performed by robots and computers. Your argument that ERP cannot be used in construction would equally apply to any scheduling system. Yet they have been used for decades. Clearly one needs to recognize the challenges that construction presents, but to simply throw-up ones hands and say it can't work is short sighted.
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Walter Tack PE,MASCE
Sarver PA
(724)305-4168 EXT 4
Original Message:
Sent: 02-15-2019 09:08
From: Kalyan Emandi
Subject: Adoption of ERP in Construction Companies-Project Management
With the current Technologies and trends , adoption of ERP in the Construction Industry is seen as a viable solution to enhance the visibility and status of various projects in ever increasing competitive world.
However, When you look closely, ERP systems were introduced mainly for manufacturing industries which are standard repetitive processes.
Yes, ERP can be adopted in areas like HR, Procurement, Finance as the processes involved are repetitive and standard.
When you look at Project Management or Projects in general this is not applicable, as each project how identical they might be are run by People.
Each person is unique be it a manager, engineer, supervisor or a mason. So, No matter how identical the projects are they differ from one another. Maybe because of the geographical location, terrain, diverse backgrounds of manpower, experience, cash flow the list is endless.
It is understood that we tend to to have individual ways of execution, thought processes and experiences . This is one of the reasons why Project Management or Project Controls will not be able to gel with ERP systems 100% as it is mainly run by People unlike other industries or sectors.
I personally think certain aspects of the Projects like HR, Procurement , Finance can adopt ERP to support the PM processes but not as a whole whether it is SAP, Oracle or Sage.
I would really appreciate fellow members to share their views as most people have already faced this or will face it in near future.
Thank you.
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Kalyan Emandi
Sr.Project Engineer
Senegal
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