The field of manufacturing currently abounds with cryptic terms and industry-specific acronyms such as MRP, MRP II, ERP, and so on. In order to eliminate confusion and to help you determine which type of software is right for you and your organization, we will define and discuss each of these concepts separately hereinafter.
• MRP Software
MRP (Material Resource Planning) software mainly enables organizations to optimize their supply chain and their use of materials. Existing modules make this possible through a Bill of Materials, which acts as the basic building block for any type of MRP software. Modern systems now also typically include routers, although most micro, small and medium-sized businesses out there could manage with just the basics.
The major downside to MRP software lies in its limited integration capability with capacity planning and other similar functions. To compensate for this deficiency, developers came up with the idea for a dynamic MRP system managed closely and progressively by a planner. However, since outsourcing part of their MRP solution wasn’t a feasible option to most companies, stand-alone MRP modules were soon to be replaced by MRP II.
• MRP II Software
Based on the software system described above, MRP II attempted to fill the gaps of its predecessor. MRP II software presented users with a new ensemble of features, which included capturing of manufacturing costs, material payment management, and advanced material accounting. MRP II software was one of the first efforts aimed at unifying all the production processes within an organization in a single standardized module.
Despite being more comprehensive than its forerunner, MRP II software modules still had plenty of holes and proved very expensive to deploy. Besides the need to set up a highly detailed Bill of Materials, MRP II required a large number of additional inputs and swallowed up lots of time and cash to install and maintain properly. Fortunately, ERP & Scheduling software soon came about, finally transforming the concepts of resource planning and scheduling into feasible and easily trackable manufacturing functions.
• ERP & Scheduling Software
ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and Scheduling Software modules are designed to provide assistance at every stage of the manufacturing process, from preliminary design and engineering through production scheduling and workflow monitoring, all the way up to quality control. State-of-the-art ERP software solutions allow for full integration with supply chain and customer relationship modules, which means they can yield a great level of control over the entire array of core business processes.
In current business dynamics, Resource Planning and Scheduling Software not only provides assistance in identifying, scheduling and distributing resources to the right jobs, it also helps with resource forecasting, balancing work loads at different levels of the organization, as well as with tracking actual resource usage.
With each passing year, and as new technologies arise, manufacturing processes are becoming increasingly complex and, because of that, more difficult to manage. However, the latest generation of ERP and scheduling software solutions fully account for this aspect, thereby incorporating additional tools to provide assistance in Product Design, Production Engineering, Production Planning and Scheduling, Real-time Monitoring of shop floor operations and even Quality Control.
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