ABSTRACT
Up to this point, we have focused on certain central themes; however,these themes, while critical to manufacturing excellence, are not suf-ficient by themselves. There are other elements that contribute to manufacturing excellence. In this chapter, we have brought together all of these other elements of excellence, and our attention will be directed primarily to two major areas: part numbering and bills of materials. These are two areas that are central to every production system — be it in manufacturing or the services. For many firms and managers, however, these two elements are poorly understood. As a result, they have generated a great deal of confusion in many systems, especially as firms undertake the upgrading of their Manufacturing Resources Planning (MRPII) systems or have made the move to Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. It is hoped that the following discussion will clarify what are essentially critical building blocks of manufacturing excellence.
