Design of ERP systems through systems life-cycle methodology and an application of the AHP method

Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering, which focuses on structure and development of complex systems. Software systems engineering is one of the main areas of systems engineering and will be a rising topic in 21st century due to the fact that software enters daily life of human beings. Companies started to use several software systems as enterprise resource planning packages in order to survive in today?s competing business life.This work aims to demonstrate the use of systems engineering lifecycle methodology in designing an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system for a particular company and use of AHP method for ERP system selection problem for the company. It combines the practical approach of business life and systematic point of view of academic methods of systems engineering to achieve the stated goal. The major contribution of this work is to approach the problem of an ERP system design from a systems engineering perspective. Firstly, the relationship between systems engineering methodologies and software systems engineering are discussed, and the question of designing an ERP system through the use of these methodologies is explored. The next problem addressed in the thesis is the task of selecting the most appropriate ERP system for the concerned company. Among the available methods for selection, the Analytical Hierarchy (AHP) method is chosen - which is basically a popular multi-criteria decision making method. This method is applied to the problem under study and the results obtained are analyzed. The overall conclusions of the work and recommendations for future research work are given at the end of the study.