ERP -
Manufacturing
Production Control systems have evolved as they have grown in capability and
complexity, chronologically from the advent of electronic accounting systems in
the 1960s:
BPI
- Bill Post and Inventory - systems from the early days of manufacturing
accounting systems providing Finished product inventory control, customer
accounts receivable, invoicing and sale reporting. Theses systems
were designed to reduce accounting and inventory carrying costs. These
were relatively straightforward systems that were easy to implement as they
emulated existing processes and focused on simply automating repetitive
processes and some financial ratio calculation.
PCS
- Production Control Systems - Extended the accounting function to include
work in process and raw materials inventory. This was the first use of
the Bill of materials.
MRP
- Materials Requirements Planning - extended the PCS to include forecasting
methodologies so that inventory usage could be planned at all levels to respond
to anticipated demand. At this point the systems became complex enough in
the inherent relationships between elements that database design became
critical to performance, and user training was a significant aspect of system
success. Initial implementations of MRP systems failed far more
frequently than they succeeded.
MRP
II - Manufacturing Resource Planning - Materials Requirements Planning systems
were enhanced with scheduling modules allowing more finite planning of capacity
issues, and allowing planning of more than just material resources - such as
manpower and equipment. At this point the concept of JIT (Just In Time) became viable.
ERP
or Enterprise Requirements Planning extended the MRP II capabilities to
encompass all aspects of the manufacturing environment. Conceptually, an ERP is
a completely integrated system encompassing all aspects of manufacturing.
Whereas MRPII was typically applicable to a single plant, ERP cuts across the enterprise
and can allow interplant and co-packing planning. To an extent it allows
supply chain management. The acronym ERP has become much more broadly
used, and from a purely technical perspective any enterprise accounting system
can be called an ERP as it is now used for any software system that covers
multiple systems that would usually require multiple software packages.
BY this definition, virtually all of the software that QIC provides could be
called an ERP system.
In
reality the line between MRPII and ERP systems is somewhat blurred and is more
of a marketing line than a pure functional line.