ABSTRACT
To compound his problems, his largest customers-those in the burgeoning high tech sector-had all jumped aboard the MRP II bandwagon and were pushing jobs into his shop using their MRP II packages to dictate priorities, schedules, and costs. The CFOs and their staffs at these Fortune 1000 companies were keenly enamored with their system’s ability to calculate inventory evaluations at the rise or fall of projected earnings. Their delivery priorities would subsequently be changed quickly, schedules pushed out or in depending on vacillating forecasts, standard lead times, and infinite scheduling-all of which served only to wreak havoc at Associated Machine Company, Inc., the small, lean job shop Jones ran in an industrial area on the outskirts of Miami.
