Knowledge acquisition for new product development with the use of an ERP database

Nowadays, a considerable number of enterprises develop new products using an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. One of the modules of a typical ERP system concerns project management. Functionalities of this module consist of defining resources, company calendars, sequence of project tasks, task duration etc. in order to obtain a project schedule. These parameters can be defined by the employees according to their knowledge, or they can be connected with data from previous completed projects. The paper investigates using an ERP database to identify critical factors, i.e. variables that significantly influence on new product development. Project duration and cost is estimated by a fuzzy neural system that uses data of completed projects stored in an ERP system.