THE APPLICABILITY OF ERP

THE APPLICABILITY OF ERP

ERP and its predecessor, MRP II, have been successfully imple-mented in companies with the following characteristics:

• Make-to-stock

• Make-to-order

• Design-to-order

• Complex product

• Simple product

• Multiple plants

• Single plant

• Contract manufacturers

• Manufacturers with distribution networks

• Sell direct to end users

• Sell through distributors

• Businesses heavily regulated by the government

• Conventional manufacturing (fabrication and assembly)

• Process manufacturing

• Repetitive manufacturing

• Job shop

• Flow shop

• Fabrication only (no assembly)

• Assembly only (no fabrication)

• High-speed manufacturing

• Low-speed manufacturing

Within the universe of companies that make things—manufac-turing enterprises—ERP has virtually universal application. This book deals with how to implement ERP in any of the above envi-ronments. Some people struggle with this applicability issue; they sometimes say: “We’re different, we’re unique, it won’t work for us.”

We’ve heard that a lot over the years. What we have never heard is:

“We’re  different,  we’re  unique,  Generally  Accepted  Accounting Principles (GAAP) won’t work for us.” Well, ERP is the logistics analogof GAAP. It’s a defined body of knowledge that contains the standard best practices for managing that part of the business. The main difference between the two is that ERP and its predecessors have been with us for about four decades; double-entry bookkeep-ing and its offshoots have been around for four centuries.