Mehrdad Kazerooni - Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering Dept., K.N.Toosi University of Technology, West-Mirdamad St., Tehran, Iran
Afshin Kazerooni - Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering Dept, Rajaei University, Tehran, Iran

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is not, only a large software package in which the integration and flow of information through an organization is promised. ERP is also a system in which the resource interactions form the business processes. Although the benefits of ERP are enormous, the risks associated with it cannot be neglected. According to this study, two major ERP project failures arise from two different sides. The first source of ERP project failure is the result of failure in the ERP setup phase which is a critical stage for any successful implementation. Poorly defined business processes are the other major source for ERP project failure. We have recognized two different users in any ERP implementation. First, knowledge workers who are needed to setup knowledge layers to control the business processes and also to control the performance and the validity of data of the second user group, data workers, who are required to work with the systems extensively to produce all transactions. This paper describes a technique by which the ERP setup phase and also the implementation phase are controlled by some knowledge layers which are established by knowledge workers who are acquainted with business rules and business knowledge of the enterprise. The proposed methodology has been tested in a telecommunication manufacturing company.

ERP, Knowledge Layers, Knowledge Workers, Business Processes