MATERIAL MATTERS - ASSESSING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF MATERIALS MANAGEMENT IS

Materials management information systems (IS) are designed to enhance decision-making performance by lowering costs, increasing turnover, an d improving service. Because of the large investment that these system s represent, companies have developed several ways to evaluate their e ffectiveness. The most direct approach is to assess the effects of the system on materials management performance outcomes such as inventory costs, turnover, and fill rates. The more common approach is to asses s effectiveness via substitute measures, such as user perceptions and usage statistics. A laboratory experiment was conducted to examine the relationships between materials management performance, user satisfac tion, and system usage. The three measures were recorded as subjects p erformed a purchasing task using an materials management IS. Correlati ons among the three measures suggest that although satisfaction and us age are closely associated with performance, the relationships among t he measures are not sufficiently strong to warrant their use as interc hangeable measures of effectiveness. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.