The Road to ERP-Has Industry Learned or Revolved Back to the Start?

Abstract

Current thinking and usage of materials management is not to view any individual materials management technique singularly as a panacea in itself, but rather to view the merits of using combinations of these techniques in an effective integrated manner: for example use MRPII at the top level MPS planning stage, JIT at the next level and Kanban (which utilises stock replenishment technique) at the operations level, while at the same time using EOQ and ABC analysis to control the cost of expensive component usage. This chapter traces the development of materials management techniques from the time of the industrial revolution to present day ERP systems. It examines the role and function of the more significant materials and inventory control techniques and explains how each has emerged and has been used as the basis for the development of successive improved techniques. This chapter also comments on the stand-alone nature of each of the techniques. The chapter however concludes with the suggestion that it is only by focusing on an enterprise as a complete system, and not as series of independent sub-systems, and to plan accordingly, that will lead organisations to the next higher level of materials management—Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP).