Track: Technology Management

Abstract

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is an important information system for organisations to improve business processes. Over the last two decades, the ERP system has been one of the most important and costly implementations of corporate information technology utilization. Compared to other industries, the food industry is the most challenging industry since they face challenges including increasing costs, government regulation, safety concerns, low margins, and constantly changing consumer tastes. In a survey conducted by Food Engineering magazine, the number one issue faced by food companies today is food safety. Food safety is a concern in every country that has large urban centers and produces massive food. The rapid development of the distribution system has strengthened the effects of contaminated food entering the food supply chain. This explains why an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software solution is essential for controlling costs, managing inventory, and meeting government regulation. The success of the ERP system in an organization depends on the knowledge transfer activity and the effectiveness of knowledge transferred between the parties involved. It is important to define a set of knowledge transfer activities that need to be done as well as the efforts taken by the organization in ensuring the success of ERP. Three factors that influence the transfer of knowledge to ERP are used in this study namely Organizational support, Transactive Memory System and IT competencies. To bridge the gap, the study employed two theories, Knowledge Based View (KBV) theory and Organisational Learning Theory (OLT) as the fundamental theories to observe the phenomenon and further incorporate with measurement theories. The main purpose of this study is to empirically validate the KT model with three main factors that influenced the ERP success specifically for food manufacturing in Malaysia. The study developed KT validated measurement scale based on rigorous steps to increase the reliability and validity values. Mix method model was uses to obtain the valid information. For qualitative data, 5 upper level employers agreed to be interviewed while for quantitative data, a total of 56 respondents have responded to the survey from 111 companies that yield 50% response rate. From qualitative analysis, the results show that employee skills is most important towards ERP success, however based on the quantitative results, it shows that IT Infrastructure (0.304) is found as most the influential factors while Communication (-0.093) and Retrieval (-0.110) factors were insignificant factors that affect KT activities towards ERP success. This study contributes a basic idea of the important requirements needed in food manufacturing because previous research only focused on the general ERP process.