What Do You Know About An ERP?

            Enterprise resource planning(ERP) ties together CAD,CAM, and other business activities. A large auto distributorship calls an auto manufacturer to check out the feasibility of changing a styling detail on 500 cars that are to be produced next month. The CAD part of the integrated system checks out the design change to see if it can be done and to determine what types of assembly line changes are necessary. CAM system on the factory floor determine if the assembly line can make the shift and if new parts can be made available on time. The CAM computers call up the computers of parts suppliers, which are also integrated into the system, to check on parts availability.

            Finally, all off the information is forwarded to accounting department computers, which calculate the cost impact of the change. Without a system that reaches across operations, such decision making would have to occur by a seat of the pants style. ERP still has yet to tap its ideal of tying together through single network. all of the major system within an organization. Such a network would conceivable span all of the processes that impact a company. For an automaker for example, this could mean starting from the mining of iron one in Pennsylvania, to making steel in Indiana, to producing cars in Detroit and Mexico, to selling to customers over the Web, to feeding back sales results.