Abstract: With the technology evolving every day and with the increase in global competition, industries are always under the pressure to be the best. They need to provide good quality products at competitive prices, when and how the customer wants them. In order to achieve this level of service, products and their respective supply chain processes need to be flexible and evolvable; otherwise changes will be extremely expensive, slow and with many combinatorial effects. Those combinatorial effects impact the whole organizational structure, from a management, financial, documentation, logistics and specially the information system Enterprise Requirement Planning (ERP) perspective. By applying the normalized system concept/theory to segments of the supply chain, we believe minimal effects, especially at the time of launching an organization global software project. The purpose of this paper is to point out that if an organization wants to develop a software from scratch or implement an existing ERP software for their business needs and if their business processes are normalized and modular then most probably this will yield to a normalized and modular software system that can be easily modified when the business evolves. Another important goal of this paper is to increase the awareness regarding the design of the business processes in a software implementation project. If the blueprints created are normalized then the software developers and configurators will use those modular blueprints to map them into modular software. This paper only prepares the ground for further studies; the above concept will be supported by going through the steps of developing, configuring and/or implementing a software system for an organization by using two methods: The Software Development Lifecycle method (SDLC) and the Accelerated SAP implementation method (ASAP). Both methods start with the customer requirements, then blue printing of its business processes and finally mapping those processes into a software system. Since those requirements and processes are the starting point of the implementation process, then normalizing those processes will end up in a normalizing software.
Abstract: Organizations are living in a very competitive and dynamic environment which is constantly changing. In order to achieve a high level of service, the products and processes of these organizations need to be flexible and evolvable. If the supply chains are not modular and well designed, changes can bring combinatorial effects to most areas of a company from its management, financial, documentation, logistics and its information structure. Applying the normalized system’s concept to segments of the supply chain may help in reducing those ripple effects, but it may also increase lead times. Lead times are important and can become a decisive element in gaining customers. Industries are always under the pressure in providing good quality products, at competitive prices, when and how the customer wants them. Most of the time, the customers want their orders now, if not yesterday. The above concept will be proven by examining lead times in a manufacturing example before and after applying normalized systems concept to that segment of the chain. We will then show that although we can minimize the combinatorial effects when changes occur, the lead times will be increased.
Abstract: Conservation works in Malaysia that is procured by
public organisation usually follow the traditional approach where the
works are tendered based on Bills of Quantities (BQ). One of the
purposes of tendering is to enable the selection of a competent
contractor that offers a competitive price. While competency of the
contractors are assessed by their technical knowledge, experience and
track records, the assessment of pricing will be dependent on the
tender amount. However, the issue currently faced by the
conservation works sector is the difficulty in assessing the
competitiveness and reasonableness of the tender amount due to the
high variance between the tenders amount. Thus, this paper discusses
the factors that cause difficulty to the tenderers in pricing
competitively in a bidding exercise for conservation tenders. Data on
tendering is collected from interviews with conservation works
contractors to gain in-depth understanding of the barriers faced in
pricing tenders of conservation works. Findings from the study lent
support to the contention that the variance of tender amount is very
high amongst tenderers. The factors identified in the survey are the
format of BQ, hidden works, experience and labour and material
costs.
Abstract: This paper has presented research in progress
concerning the contribution of target costing approach to
achievement competitive price in the Iraqi firm. The title of the
paper is one of the subjects that get large concerns in the finance and
business world in the present time. That is because many competitive
firms have appeared in the regional and global markets and the rapid
changes that covered all fields of life. On the other hand, this paper
concentrated on lack knowledge of the industrial firms, regarding the
significant role of target cost for achieving the competitive prices.
The paper depends on the main supposition, using the competitive
price to get the target cost in the industrial firms. In order to achieve
competitive advantage in business world the firms should rely on
modern methods to manage cost and profit. From strategic
perspective the target cost achieves a so powerful competitive
advantage represented in cost reduction. Nevertheless the target cost
does not exclude the calculation and survey of costs during the
production process. Products- estimated costs are calculated and
compared with the target costs.