Sprague, T: Education and Training As Part of an Expeditiona

One current venture of the United States Air Force (USAF) is the implementation of the largest ever single-instance of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. This project, dubbed Enterprise Combat Support System (ECSS), has the potential to integrate the USAF worldwide supply chain and make transparent the currently cloudy connections between parts, people and processes. Unfortunately, ERP implementations are rife with potential problems and there is no guarantee of successfully implementing ECSS unless the USAF properly manages these problems. One problem area the USAF must manage is ERP education and training. According to the literature, this area is consistently underestimated. In addition, the education and training success factors are hard to identify and none of the reviewed literature contained a synthesis of these factors. The intent of this study is to help overcome this problem by first identifying the potential education and training success factors. Then, using a multiple case study methodology, the study empirically tests how well the identified factors compare to the methods used by companies implementing an ERP system. Finally, the study compares the proposed USAF ECSS end user training plan to these findings to identify potential problems and help develop recommendations for the implementation team.