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ERP5 - A Next-Generation, Open-Source ERP Architecture
ERP5 - A Next-Generation, Open-Source ERP Architecture
ERP5:
A Next-Generation,
Open-Source
ERP Architecture
W
hen someone says enterprise share innovation on management techniques and
resource planning (ERP), most IT their implementation through software.
professionals think of the expen- In 2001, two companies initiated the ERP5 proj-
sive, complex, and difficult-to- ect: Nexedi, a Zope service provider in France
implement commercial products that were the (Zope is a well-known open-source application
rage a few years ago. Although many large cor- server), and Coramy, a European apparel manu-
porations did reap tremendous cost savings from facturer.They aimed to develop a set of ERP soft-
the implementation of such systems, an average ware components for small and medium-sized
implementation cost counted in the millions of companies. In addition to source code, the proj-
dollars; this has prevented ERP systems from ect also produced educational material and a
spreading to small and medium-sized businesses. clearly defined theoretical model.To fit the needs
After ERP deployment, its “blackbox” nature of smaller companies, they also designed ERP5
prevents from understanding and eventually for distribution across distant sites with slow and
improving the business processes it implements, unreliable Internet connections.
leaving some important business decisions to the
software publisher rather than to the corporate ERP5 MAIN COMPONENTS
manager, preventing scientific researchers from Like other ERP systems, ERP5 uses compo-
getting involved in management innovation. nents as the basis for the system. All functions
This situation provides much of the motivation derive from or depend on only five basic concepts.
for our architecture, ERP5, which offers several
advantages for business.All ERP5 tools are open • Planning. ERP5 offers common ERP functions
source, so are free and have openly available like production planning and control, materials
source code that a business can change to suit its management, finances, accounting, billing, budg-
processes. ERP5 incorporates, from scratch, eting,human resources,and the compatible trans-
advanced concepts such as object-oriented data- actions.
bases, a content management system, • Customer Relationship Management. ERP5 tracks
Inside synchronization, variations, workflows, customer relations (like meetings,sales prospects,
and a method to model and imple- and phone calls) and provides a reporting engine
Resources ment business processes. ERP5 is also to classify customers into categories (by country,
a Web site where researchers can size, and market segment, for example).
38 IT Pro July ❘ August 2003 Published by the IEEE Computer Society 1520-9202/03/$17.00 © 2003 IEEE
Figure 1. ERP5 core classes.
Amount
+quantity: Quantity
Transportation
+location +variant: Variant
MetaNode
+findInputNode()
+findOutputNode()
Prototype
Item
+gid:
+quantity:
+content Tracking
Container
TrackSheet
+ship()
+receive()
• Content Management System. ERP5 can act as a content of variation, meta-planning, and information synchro-
management system for an intranet. The system can nization.
store, index, and classify all documents. The ERP5 con- To support these features, on the technological side,
tent management system can retrieve a document based ERP5 offers a new mapping technology for object or rela-
on the combination of a category (production incidents, tional DBMS (database management system) integration,
for example) and a keyword (such as “overheat”), which a new active-messaging technology for interaction mod-
helps to capitalize on knowledge within the company. eling, and a new synchronization technology for electronic
This way, ERP5 can deal with both structured and non- data interchange.
structured information.
• E-business. ERP5 implements B2C and B2B systems. Variation
Thanks to workflow modeling, a sales process can manage ERP5 can represent possible variations for a given
all the interactions between the online shop and customer, resource, such as color, size, and speed.Variations are very
including e-mail exchanges. Using this component, it is useful in industries such as computers, to specify memory
possible to automate typical transactions, such as when a size, disk size, or processor speed; apparel, to specify color
customer returns a purchase. and size; and cars, to specify color, engine, or options.
• Groupware. ERP5 integrates with groupware products, Variations define complex resources that result from suc-
including those for e-mail, agendas, directories, shared cessive transformations. ERP5 represents each transfor-
workspaces, IP telephony, IP conferencing, and instant mation as a collection of transformations, some of which
messaging. apply to all variations. Others apply only to certain varia-
tions.
ERP5-SPECIFIC FEATURES Variations use only a single resource descriptor and a
ERP5 is multilingual and deals with many types of cur- collection of options to define many configurations of a
rency; it works across several companies and users. It also given product. This strategy avoids the creation of a com-
incorporates the unified model of business flows in Figure plex taxonomy, a huge number of database records, and
1, which maps all corporate information into five basic the tracking of a product number for each variation of the
concepts (thus the name ERP5). It also uses the concepts same product. Although used extensively in the apparel
industry, the concept of variations is not well-known or C) or general (the company expects to sell 10,000 of prod-
used in other industries. uct X to small retailers). In this example, product X is a
Most commercial ERP software does not support vari- meta-resource and small retailers are a meta-organiza-
ations, but we believe variations should be at the heart of tion—a metanode in ERP5 terminology. ERP5’s meta fea-
any modern ERP system. Variations will be essential to ture helps manage a group of companies that belong to a
creating product lines according to a customer’s needs common holding; it can also manage factoring partner-
without creating thousands of product identifiers. This ships—partnerships where one company asks a few other
mass-customization concept manages customer needs companies to cooperate and together build a product.
without losing the benefits of standardization.
Information synchronization
Meta planning We designed ERP5 to function on multiple sites with
We base ERP5 on a model that can associate anything to low-quality Internet connectivity, so each site must be able
a category. Examples include a category of resources (such to run by itself in the case of a network failure. ERP5
as service, raw material, skill, or money) or a category of implements distribution by using synchronization and an
organizations (such as a group of companies, a group of extension of the SyncML protocol. For example, suppose
people, or a retail chain). ERP5 can manipulate these cat- a stock A and a stock B located on two production sites
egories just as it manipulates resources and organizations. AA and BB exchange some resource through a business
This means that users can plan resources at any given level, rule. If this rule requires site BB to know the stock values
whether for a group of companies or for a retail chain. of A, ERP5 will create a local representation of stock A
Resource planning can be detailed (the company expects on site BB and synchronize data between this local repre-
to sell 10,000 items of model number 223311 to customer sentation and the real values of stock A. Site BB will then
E
Generates RP5 is now in production at the first European
site, and development continues. The ERP5
<<movement>> Generates <<movement>> Consortium—a group of independent organ-
A future izations—organizes the ERP5 project. Consortium
An invoice
payment
members are users, developers, and IT companies
that base commercial services and research efforts
on ERP5. This consortium is in charge of coordi-
ery). All generated movements then go into a causality nating research and development contributions, promot-
that relates to the transformation. ing the use of ERP5, and providing education and
A delivery of goods should generate an invoice move- certification frameworks. Consortium members come from
ment, depending on the commercial conditions for the par- France, the Netherlands, and Brazil.
ticular customer and the delivered goods. In the research arena, ERP5 members are developing
Each invoice movement should generate a future-pay- advanced components for decision support, based on opti-
ment movement, depending on the commercial conditions, mization, soft computing, and the data mining of object
as Figure 5 illustrates. Another example is the cost evalu- repositories. The first component, known as Strategic
ation of a delivery. Each delivery between nodes should Sourcing, implements e-procurement. It uses fuzzy sets
generate a movement to represent the cost of paying peo- and integer programming to evaluate contract risk and to
ple to move objects across the workshop. minimize the total cost of ownership for purchased items,
Another example is the salary rule. Each month a com- while considering multiple concurrent sources.
pany should create a movement for each of its employees. ERP5 will also help increase the adoption of open-
That is, the movement should move an amount of a source and free software technologies in small and
resource (cash) from the company’s funds to the employee. medium-size enterprises. and will improve a market of
This movement represents the payment of the employee’s interoperable services and solutions based on the ERP5
monthly salary. From this movement, a set of rules should platform.We believe this will lead to increased innovation
generate movements to represent the payment of bonuses, and transparency in the global ERP market by setting new
insurance, and taxes. industry standards. Research on management and organ-
From the previous examples, we can synthesize two ization sciences will find a reference platform in ERP5.
generic concepts: Movements relate to each other by ERP5 will create a new channel for e-commerce applica-
causalities; causalities relate to a rule. tions, which often require tight integration with ERP soft-
There seems to be an origin to causality: One movement ware.Today,vendors of proprietary ERP systems are blocking
generates other movements. In other words, causality does the entry of new vendors into the market for e-commerce
not seem to be symmetric. This situation differs slightly application software.If open-source initiatives like ERP5 suc-
from the more general symmetrical model first introduced ceed,they will prevent these companies from having monop-
for causalities. olistic control of future e-commerce applications. ■
Causality trees are much easier to implement than
causality graphs. It also seems that trees, instead of graphs, Jean-Paul Smets-Solanes is the CEO of Nexedi SARL and
can represent most causalities. For these reasons, we chose the main developer of the ERP5 project. He also heads the
to implement causalities with trees in ERP5. Production EuroLinux Alliance for a Free Information Infrastructure
planning in most companies usually combines pull and is vice-president of the French Speaking Linux and Free
approaches, where orders are the cause of build-order Software Association. Contact him at jp@nexedi.com.
movements. This sort of triggering represents just-in-time,
zero-stock management. In a push approach, inbound ship- Rogério Atem de Carvalho is a teacher and researcher at
ments cause build-order movements, an approach more the Federal Center for Technology Education of Campos-
appropriate for the food industry, for example. CEFET Campos, Brazil. Contact him at r.carvalho@
computer.org.
Profiles
The whole simulation process sometimes must use pre- For further information on this or any other computing
defined values to create new movements. Such values might topic, visit our Digital Library at http://computer.org/
include prices, discounts, and payment options. ERP5 calls publications/dlib.