ABSTRACT
November 1990: The Hague. The UK Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC) sent one of its leading experts to an international workshop organised to discuss the future of the computer systems used to run industrial enterprises. The workshop was one of a number organised in Europe and the USA that year to assess the prospects for these technologies that were seen as constituting ‘best practice’ in manufacturing organisations and crucial for industrial competitiveness. The workshop, organised by the Eindhoven Group, widely regarded as the
‘leading research group in Europe’ on these technologies, attracted a strong and interdisciplinary turnout, with over sixty consultants, technology vendors, users and academics coming together to discuss its provocative ‘rationale document’. Gerry Waterlow (consultant to SERC’s Application of Computers and Manufacturing and Engineering Directorate) circulated a report, drawing attention to the consensus that appeared to have been reached around the central argument advanced by this document. He suggested that these conclusions could probably be regarded as a ‘reasonable snapshot’ of the direction in which the particular technology they were all there to discuss was moving. It was even suggested that – such was the consensus – the workshop itself might help to underwrite this future direction since many of the actors central to its shaping were present in the room. The technology under the microscope was the state of the art of what we
today would call Enterprise Resource Planning solutions – known then as Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP) systems. In the late 1980s, MRP technology had been heavily promoted as a solution suitable for a wide range of organisations. However the title of the workshop – ‘Beyond MRP: MRP and the Future of Standard Software for Production Planning and Control’ – made it clear something was afoot. One did not have to read too far into the workshop rationale document to see the sting:
The development of MRP (I and II) has led…to a specific production control philosophy [as well] as to standard software for production control. Control philosophy and standard software are heavily intertwined. Having standard software for production control is very important in
practice, as well with respect to the whole implementation and training process as with respect to maintenance. On the other hand MRP (philosophy and software) seems not to fit well everywhere.
