Abstract
In this paper, we develop a mobile-based collaboration platform for production planning called Mobi-Manager. The platform is built for the furniture industry based on the case Egyptian furniture production sector. The platform focuses on multiple stakeholders’ interactions and communications in the typical furniture manufacturing factory. From the previous studies, we concluded that there is a lack of information and communication technologies in the furniture industry management. Also, the established enterprise resource planning systems do not provide relevant solutions on the small and medium furniture enterprises scale. In particular, in the Egyptian furniture sector, the production managers encounter challenges in monitoring and controlling the production lines and departments. To address the dominant problems, we implemented a design thinking approach and identified the following three key features for Mobi-Manager: 1) facilitating managerial duties, 2) monitoring the production line efficiently, and 3) tracking each part into the manufacturing facility effortlessly. This paper has two contributions. First, it performs an empirical study of how current information technology solutions could be reconfigured by a design thinking approach for understanding human-centered requirements. The other is to analyze actual administrative problems and integrate multiple prototypes in a small-scale system suitable for small and micro enterprises. The proposed system is applied to a case of an Egyptian Furniture Company.
Recommended Citation
Salama, Shady; Mnale, Frobin; Park, Jaehyun; Abdelhalim, Alyaa; and Eltawil, Amr B., "Mobi-Manager: A Collaboration Platform for Production Management: the case of the Egyptian Furniture Industry" (2017). PACIS 2017 Proceedings. 177.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/pacis2017/177