Yongxin Paper Co., Ltd. 161Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without writtencorrelative knowledge to the employees smoothly. To senior administrators, it was of
utmost importance to understand the management skills of ERP and any possible risks;
to middle-level managers, it was helping to meet the changes of operation flow; to
operation personnel, test and operation knowledge is a must. For more effective
knowledge sharing, they first send their top personnel to ERP consultants to learn
correlative techniques and then transferred the techniques to other personnel through
training. In this way, ERP knowledge can be understood and absorbed more readily.
Meanwhile, it made knowledge sharing an integral part of the company’s practices. A
three-level training system was created to assist this transfer:
- ERP management theories training for top managers
- ERP system application and maintenance training for operators
- Daily application training for top department personnel elites
Conclusion
Automating a company’s information management is a very complicated learning
process. No other approach can take the place of knowledge sharing, and we make it into
a reality by learning and practicing ceaselessly (Roda, Angehrn, Nabeth, & Razmerita,
2003). The implementation of an ERP system in Yongxin tells us that it is a system that
can assist a company’s internal knowledge sharing. Only through integration into a
company’s strategic plan and infrastructure can it bring a far-reaching influence on the
company’s development.
CURRENT CHALLENGES/PROBLEMS
FACING THE ORGANIZATION
For the Employees
Because of the variance of the employees’ levels and resistance to change, training
is difficult for Yongxin, a 50-year-old state-owned enterprise. Although the compulsory
computer training enhanced employees’ familiarity with the technology, it did not give
them a deep understanding of ERP; therefore, it is incapable of melding the ERP system
into the enterprise’s business process making them incapable of capitalizing on ERP’s
advantages (Ghosn & Bengio, 2003).
For the Managers
Because of the limitation of internal processes in Chinese state-owned enterprises,
at the beginning of the ERP implementation, Vice-General Manager Yin Jicai could not
coordinate and motivate corresponding departments. In order to promote the ERP, he set
aside other vice-general managers, which led to their embarrassment as they were not
aware of the value of the ERP system. Even when the ERP system performed well in some
departments, the managers did not realize the merit of ERP. Hence, they did not use the
ERP system to plan their work, resulting in their work plans not integrating with those
from the rest of the enterprise. Training these managers will not work either, as they did
not participate in the implementation of ERP. They do not have a thorough grasp of the