Enterprise Resource Planning Systems and Agriculture

This assignment examines the implementation and impact of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems within the agricultural sector, specifically within the context of dairy farming. It draws upon Australian examples like Moxey Farms to illustrate how ERP systems are transforming operational practices and enhancing efficiency in large-scale dairy operations. The analysis encompasses various aspects of ERP implementation, including its contribution to organizational goals, challenges faced, and benefits realized.

Running head: Enterprise Architecture 1
ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE
Student Name
Institution

Enterprise Architecture 2
Introduction
Current demand in animal products such as milk is continuously increasing with more
focus drawn on ways to optimize production using limited resources as possible. This drives the
ArchiFarm to look for modern technology that has the capability to monitor and assess various
aspects of milk production system to ensure there are high efficiencies. The whole idea is the basis of
the computerized automated system called PLM. Precision Livestock Management (PLM) is an
enterprise system that has the capability to increase precision in the livestock production. The
PLM software is able to connect the three main aspects of farm and these are stakeholders or
drivers, business functions, and business processes. If well implemented, the whole system will
monitor the production of each cow throughout the value chain. That implies that PLM monitor,
health, and feeding of the animal that is transferred to milk each cow produced. This is again
tracked down to the distribution to determine the overall performance of each farm site. The
program also reconciles the distribution information with other farm processes. The main focus
of this paper is to explore the different aspects of Precision Livestock Management within
ArchiFarm.
Task 1.1: Stakeholders and Drivers
Stakeholders play an important role in business process within an organization and this is
similar to the case of the ArchiFarm enterprise system. There many stakeholders in the farm and
some of these stakeholders are farm’s staffs, distributors, wholesalers, animal feed producers,
maintenance contractors, and veterinarians. Firstly, farms staffs are both the management and the
ordinary farmers who perform various tasked within the farm hence play an important role in the

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dairy production. At each site, there are various employees that are lead by the site manager.
Secondly, milk distributors ship the milk using refrigerated to the processing plant. In addition,
distributors also transport the processed milk to wholesalers to various locations. Thirdly,
another group of stakeholders is animal feed producers that also supply feeds to various sites
(Information Resources Management Association p. 1065). The feed is supplied on specific
interval hence the feed that is given to each cow has minimal variation. Fourthly, wholesalers are
stakeholders nearer to consumers in the value chain and are linked to processes by distributors.
Fifthly, maintenance contractors take care of both farm structure and various machinery within
the farm and this is to ensure that the farm remains operative. Another group of stakeholders is
veterinarians who monitor the health of every animal though the farm intends to introduce new
system aiming at monitoring animal. Clients are the stakeholders at the far end of the value chain
are the end user or consumers of the milk that is produced from ArchiFarm (Berckmans 2004).
Drivers, on the other hand, include supply, distribution, maintenance, health assessments,
and management. Firstly, supply and distribution are key drivers in the farm as feed is supply
into the farm while milk produced on the farm is also distributed to processors and wholesalers.
Secondly, management plays an important role is basic and vital drivers that determine the
success of the company. The company is introducing management tool that is an automated
system to manage especially production systems. Thirdly, farm maintenance is another driver as
this focus in improving the efficiency of farm process. This is closely connected to another
driver that is health assessment that mostly focuses on assessing the health of cows and this will
be done using Precision Livestock Management (PLM) tool. Another driver that is key to the
farm production is the Enterprise system itself. PLM is a driver that project high efficiencies that

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will ensure that most other drivers are monitors at single cow level (Zoran et al. 2007, p.145-
146).
The three goals of the whole system are the economic, quality and sustainable dairy
production. The main goal of management is to achieve an economically optimal level of input
in production through monitoring production all sites. The economic goal of the farm is
predicted through the use of PLM that is expected to monitor and predict the quality of feeds that
a cow use at a time hence reduces feed wastage. Moreover, the software aims to monitor all the
distribution to ensure high efficiencies within the supply and distribution (Pallab 2008, p.39).
Secondly, quality goal focus on the delivery of quality and safer produce free from any related
contamination. Monitoring health of every single cow within the farm with the goal of ensuring
sick cow has its milk excluded in the main production system. This will also enable the farm
management to predict problem well before it can spread to other animals. Thirdly, sustainability
in production is another goal of the entire production with the view to ensure that there is
minimal environmental pollution resulting from the production (Kovacs & Paganelli 2003,
pp.165–165).
The farm has several assessments that include health assessments for each cow though
the organization is trying to add assessments into the software. One assessment done on the farm
is the animal health that aims at examining the diseased animal and isolate it. This is projecting
to assist managerial assessments of organization’s production systems. Another area of concern
in the assessment is the consistency of drivers with the managerial goals for the farm. This
implies that drivers, as outlined in the strategies of the farm, need to continuously assess to see

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their performance. Moreover, the assessment is supposed to help in risk mitigation and is meant
to understand the level of efficiency in the organization (Jörg, Pernici & Weske 2004, pp. 202).
One ArchMate view of the software can be designed to show three views structural and
dynamics. The structural view shows the relationship between drivers, stakeholders, and goals
can be linked to the software (ArchiMate® 2017). The ArchiMate view on the three main aspects
of stakeholders, drivers, and goals are interlinked within the main software to give the main
objective of the farm. Stakeholders are related to drivers and also link goals set by the farm
management. The structure of the software highlight key stakeholders and the drivers they link,
for instance, animal feed supplier is linked to the driver called supply. Each stakeholder has a
role to play in the value chain of the farm and this is directly related to drivers such as supply for
instance which also a driver is leading to effective feeds delivery in the farm. All these three
aspects form the backbone of the value chain for ArchiFarm and can be incorporated in the
ArchMate. Dynamics, on the other hand, is used to model the temporary business elements
within the farm (Gerben 2014).

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Task 1.2: Business Functions
The business process includes internal and external functions. Firstly, internal functions
can be further grouped into three producing, selling, and supporting functions. Secondly,
ArchiFarm selling functions describe sales process and marketing where sales focus on product
presentation to customers and marketing that focus on product promotion. ArchiFarm has a good
producing function with the view of producing quality milk, conduct research on milk and
distributing milk to processors and wholesaler. Selling aspect of internal functions is done at the
wholesale level since the farm distributes milk to the processing plant and later to the wholesaler.
Supporting functions are divided into finance, computing, human resource and purchasing
functions (Jarvis 2003, p. 9). Computing aspect is becoming the main component of the business
process in the farm with the development and implementation of PLM. The finance function is

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concerned with development and maintenance of accounting records or management. Human
resource, on the other hand, manages the employees in every site with direction from head office
in Sydney. Purchasing function assists the farm to purchase feeds from feed producers, contract
maintenance contractors hence farm machinery purchases. External functions include advertising
campaigns, marketing, and recruitment of employees (Grant, Hall, Wailes & Wright 2006, pp 2–
15). The farm has human resource management that offers employee recruitment based in the
head office. As farm business function the department is a task to recruit both management and
farm works that perform different work each site. Marketing is the sole responsibility of the head
office located in Sydney.
The ArchiMate view for the business function consists of two main layers one for the
internal functions and another for external functions. These layers are joined to the main layer of
business processes/functions. This view assists the management to assess the external functions
and hence deduce their effects on the overall performance of functions. The management is,
therefore, able to verify the relationship between various components of the business functions
within the ArchiFarm. Another aspect of the ArchiMate view is on the business collaborations or
interactions that define the levels of interaction between various business functions within layers.
The main business function backbone is joined together with other layers forming the first level
of interaction (Band 2016).

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Task 1.3: Business Processes
Business processes are various tasks that work coherently together to produce services.
According to Lapalme (2010, pp. 37–43), there are three main business processes are
management processes, operational processes and supporting processes that can be highlighted
within the farm. The core foundation of the ArchiFarm is the optimized milk production with
considerations of quality, healthy and sustainable. Firstly, the management processes control the
operational processes and this is based on the corporate structure headed by the board. The basis
of the governance within the farm is based on the cooperate culture of the farm and the strategic
ability to control all the business operations within the farm. Secondly, operation processes
consist of the main farm milk production business process that can be termed as the core
business of the farm. The business operation within the farm ensures that all the business

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involved in the milk production (Malakooti 2013). In addition, the operation processes ensure
that all other business processes within the farm are properly coordinated to the smooth operation
of the farm in general. Thirdly, the supporting processes are services such as health assessment
that is done by veterinarians. Supporting processes help the farm to achieve and ensure that is the
required processes works without risk from diseases and milk contamination. The farm has
automated machine that will use data to monitor the health of animals and this is important for
supporting processes that reduce contamination of milk supply (Byrne 2012).
The ArchiMate view on the business processes is structure of business processes,
consistency, and completeness, responsibilities. Firstly, the main view would have structures of
business processes that are attached to the main layer maximizing the idea of synchronizing the
three processes that are the core business processes within the farm. The layer here is a business
layer and an aspect is a behavior. The software needs to incorporate the three main processes that
include joining business operation process to management and supporting processes. Operational
processes especially farm feeding processes are automated to determine the number of feeds that
are given to the individual animal with the view to closely optimise operation processes. Another
area of business processes that forms part of ArchMate is supporting that focus on the services
such as accounting processes, health assessments, and other supporting services. The
organization view automated machine will help the farm increase production through data-driven
support processes (Telematica Institute 2006, p.7). The management processes is a unifying
process that monitors or supervise all other processes to achieve the set objectives of milk
production. An example of an ArchMate view is shown in the figure below.

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Conclusion
In conclusion, the Precision Livestock Management adoption within the ArchiFarm is
projecting good production management characterized by optimal production with the proper use of
feeds within the farm. Business functions play an important role in the farm and can be grouped into
internal and external functions. Business processes on the other, include managerial processes,
operational processes, and support processes. The interactions of various layers of business link to
form backbones that will be used to monitor or assess processes and functions. PLM is projected to
cause high efficiencies in the milk production with limited resource wasted. In addition, the
automated production monitoring system will synchronize production and predict any risk associated
with the disease.

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