5. If you were Elaine Kramer, what would your greatest worries be as you started this ERP implementation? What about if you were the Vandelay CEO? CASE:

On a Monday morning in January, 1996, Elaine Kramer was in her Philadelphia office catching up on e-mail. She had been in Minneapolis the previous week for a series of meetings between her firm, Deloitte & Touch Consulting Group/ICS, and the executives and plant managers of Vans delay Industries Inc., a major producer of industrial process equipment. The week had ended with the two companies signing a contract to work together on a large information systems implementation project.

Her phone rang. "This is Elaine Kramer."

"Hi, Elaine, this is George Hall. I manage Van delay's Dumbarton plant; we met at the project kick-off meetings last week."

"Oh, yes - how are you, George? I really enjoyed the presentation on your pull-based manufacturing project. You guys have generated some really impressive results. What can I do for you?"

"I was just wondering if I could start getting my people signed up for training on the R/3 system. I know it's early, but we're really eager to dig in here. Your presentation got a lot of people excited about getting rid of our plant's old mainframe. We want to get an R/3 team together so were ready to work on the system as soon as it's installed at Dumbarton."

"Well, we haven't started putting training schedules together yet..."

"Well, keep us in mind when you do. Like I said in the presentation, we're a bunch of tinkerers, and that's what has helped us improve so much over the past few years. We think R/3 can really help us past some of our current roadblocks, so we're eager to start experimenting with it."

"OK, let me get back to you once we're further along with training plans."

After Kramer hung up the phone she mentally replayed the conversation; it raised an issue that had been in the back of her mind since the meetings. How much should the plants in the network be encouraged to modify their local set-up of the new computer system once it had been installed?

Project Background

Van delay had decided in 1995 to implement a single Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) information system throughout the corporation. The firm had chosen the R/3 system from SAP AG, a German company that was the market lead in ERP products. Van delay hoped that the R/3 implementation would end the existing fragmentation of its systems, allow process standardization across the corporation, and give it a competitive advantage over its rivals.

Van delay managers realized that putting R/3 in place would be an enormous effort, of which installation of hardware and software was only a small part. For help with all aspects of the project, from the technical details of an ERP system to widespread business practice changes, Van delay had engaged the Deloitte & Touch Consulting Group / ICS. ICS assisted clients in managing fundamental changes of the kind entailed by an ERP system, and had significant expertise with SAP's R/3 product.

Kramer, who had been with the firm for over 5 years, had been chosen to lead the project. At the meetings in Minneapolis she had been impressed with Van delay's enthusiasm for the project. The plant managers seemed especially excited; many of them had said that they considered their existing information systems an impediment, rather than an aid, to efficient production.

George Hall certainly seemed pleased at the thought of R/3 in his plant, but Kramer was not entirely calmed by their conversation. Hall had evidently assumed that Dumbarton would be free to modify the system at will; Kramer knew that this would not be the case. She wondered how to respond to his request for training, and how to let him and the other plant managers know that all decisions about R/3 were not under their control.