Analysis of effectiveness and benefits of collaboration modes with information- and knowledge-sharing

This study addresses an empirical analysis of information- and knowledge-sharing among collaborative decision makers. In this research, each decision maker represents one of three distributed centers in ERP systems: Sales, Production, and Procurement Centers. Their respective objectives and decision policies are defined to design collaborative decision-making environments. MICSS-LAN, an ERP simulation tool, was applied for the experiments, generating explicit numerical results that enable the measurement of the effectiveness and benefits by collaborative decision making. The experimental results indicate that total profit and due date performance have been improved by information- and knowledge-sharing. It implies that better design and utilization of ERP structures can be achieved by a certain level of information- and knowledge-sharing.