Behaviour Analysis of Distributed Systems under Time Change Constraints

The rising functionality of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions may be seen as one of many effects of globalisation. This leads to complex markets and enterprising demand of new business experts. A system-integrated business simulation can be seen as an appropriate tool to encounter such business challenges: On the one hand, they assist managers in their planning under the usage of real business data. On the other hand, this simulation can be embedded in a serious gaming environment for educational purposes. For the conceptualisation of such a communication platform – connecting an ERP system with a simulation engine – several technical challenges have to be ventilated. This paper concentrates on the mapping of future business periods in the host ERP system. By following a behaviouristic approach, time setting experiments have been processed with a distributed SAP ERP 6.0 system. Those experiments reveal that SAP ERP 6.0 can be set to future time points and therefore be in line with simulated business periods.