THE DEVELOPMENT OF A METHOD FOR DETERMINING THE EFFICIENCY AND EFFECTIVENESS OF INSTALLED CAPM SYSTEMS

This paper presents work on the design and development of a methodolog y to evaluate an installed Computer-Aided Production Management (CAPM) system. Such systems, despite their costs of purchase and implementat ion, find wide application in industry but there is still considerable debate as to their contribution to the overall performance of a compa ny. A variety of possible methodologies has been explored. However, it was found that most of the existing techniques tended to focus on a c omparison of systems with respect to best practice or to require data that a company was unlikely to have. A flexible methodology, designed to establish the effectiveness and efficiency of an installed CAPM sys tem has, therefore, been developed. The method employs a Delphi approa ch and is designed to establish the contribution of the CAPM system to the company's overall competitive position. In its development, a gen eric CAPM system model was devised which was intended to facilitate th e investigation without reference to any particular technology, manage ment mode, or manufacturing control system. The method consists of fou r stages: stage I establishes the context; stage II determines the und erlying architecture of the system; stage III quantifies the contribut ion to the company's competitive position; and stage IV identifies any problems in the particular CAPM system under scrutiny. The design is such that it enables a systematic investigation of the CAPM system to be completed, the system's contribution to the company to be identifie d and any inadequacies to be determined. The method was developed in c ollaboration with a number of companies all of which were experiencing various difficulties with their (different) CAPM systems. The tests r evealed that the proposed method provides useful information on the pe rformance of an installed CAPM system. The paper presents the overall structure of the methodology and gives details of the investigation an d development in each of the collaborating companies. (C) 1998 Elsevie r Science B.V. All rights reserved.