ABSTRACT
Early manufacturers used inventory consumption as their order guide. However, when demand was erratic, the result was stock outs or surpluses. Materials Requirements Planning (MRP), which has been around since the 1970s, was designed to provide an accurate view of future consumption. Similarly, Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP II) was created to track the resources needed for that production and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) added other modules in an eff ort to provide even greater consistency to a company’s processes.
