Material matters: Assessing the effectiveness of materials management IS
Materials management information systems (IS) are designed to enhance decision-making performance by lowering costs, increasing turnover, and improving service. Because of the large investment that these systems represent, companies have developed several ways to evaluate their effectiveness. The most direct approach is to assess the effects of the system on materials management performance outcomes such as inventory costs, turnover, and fill rates. The more common approach is to assess effectiveness via substitute measures, such as user perceptions and usage statistics. A laboratory experiment was conducted to examine the relationships between materials management performance, user satisfaction, and system usage. The three measures were recorded as subjects performed a purchasing task using an materials management IS. Correlations among the three measures suggest that although satisfaction and usage are closely associated with performance, the relationships among the measures are not sufficiently strong to warrant their use as interchangeable measures of effectiveness. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.
materials management decision-making performance user satisfaction purchasing is effectiveness is success is assessment system use