Zostner-Zostner Industries (ZZI) is a manufacturer of warehouse and inventory tracking systems. ZZI has four U.S. plants and three warehouses. The company employees 3500 workers at these facilities and the corporate headquarters. ZZI is using legacy systems for its accounting, materials requirement planning, receivables, payables, inventory, and payroll processes. These various legacy systems were developed at different times and do not necessarily have common data formats or programming. Often, ZZI must export data from one legacy system to incorporate into a second legacy system. The president has decided that the company must switch to an ERP system to bring the company”s systems up to date and to enable the company to remain competitive.
Required:
- Describe how an ERP system could improve performance at ZZI.
- Describe the relative advantages and disadvantages of a big bang versus a modular implementation.
- If ZZI chooses a modular implementation, how might it choose the order in which to implement modules?