In 2011, at the Hanover Fair, the term Industry 4.0 was first coined. In October 2012, the Working Group on Industry 4.0, presented a set of implementation recommendations to the German government. The term Industry 4.0 initiates from a project in the high-tech strategy of the German government. Such project advocates the computerization of the manufacturing industry. It is also known as the 4th industrial revolution. Precisely speaking, industry 4.0 is based on the technological concepts of cyber-physical systems, Internet of Things (IoT), which enables the Factory of the Future (FoF). Within the modular structured smart factories of Industry 4.0, cyber-physical systems monitor physical processes, create a virtual copy of the physical world and make decentralized decisions. Over the IoT, Cyber-physical systems communicate and cooperate with each other and with humans in real time. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are considered the backbone for the Industry 4.0. Thus, this paper attempts to answer the research question: “Are today's ERP systems ready for the FoF?”. We have conducted interviews with manufacturers, ERP vendors, and partners in order to seek their feedback on the readiness of ERP systems for the FoF. Our results show that ERP systems are ready for the FoF

Patient safety is a serious global public health concern. Official statistics show that there is an increasing number of mistreatments within healthcare due to the improper identification of the patient or the drug administered to the patient. It is believed that the majority of the medical errors caused by misidentifications are preventable by introducing integrated IT infrastructures. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is believed to be the next generation technology for tracking and data-collection and has successfully been applied in several industries such as manufacturing, retail and logistics. RFID technology is also seen as the next disruptive innovation in healthcare and represents several opportunities for increased safety, operational efficiency and cost savings, by tagging inventory, assets, patients and personnel. Even though RFID promises several benefits for the healthcare industry, the adoption of RFID technology in the health sector has not been as striking as anticipated and still lags behind compared to other industries.

This review summarizes research on enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems in small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs). Due to the close-to-saturation of ERP adoptions in large enterprises (LEs), ERP vendors now focus more on SMEs. Moreover, because of globalization, partnerships, value networks, and the huge information flow across and within SMEs nowadays, more and more SMEs are adopting ERP systems. Risks of adoption rely on the fact that SMEs have limited resources and specific characteristics that make their case different from LEs. The main focus of this article is to shed the light on the areas that lack sufficient research within the ERP in SMEs domain, suggest future research avenues, as well as, present the current research findings that could aid practitioners, suppliers, and SMEs when embarking on ERP projects.

Cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems emerged around the new millennium, and since then there has been a lack of research regarding the evolution and update processes of these systems. From the users’ perspective, updates in a traditional on-premise ERP system are carried at their own request; while cloud-based ERPs are compulsory updated. Through an established ERP lifecycle framework, this study investigates how the process of updates is conducted in a cloud ERP context, from both the users’ and vendors’ perspectives. A multiple case study was conducted in Norway at 10 client organizations, as well as a cloud ERP vendor. Our main findings suggest that the vendor and the users view the process of updates differently. The main challenges with the process of updates from the users’ perspective are the size and date of the updates, lack of information and communication during the process, and extinction of certain functionalities. Yet, the main advantages are that all system users will always have the same version of the system, users do not need to spend time on updating the system and paying attention to the ERP market, which leads to more focus on their core competences instead.