The greatest mysteries of the ancient world usually revolve around how something was made. The Pyramids of Egypt, Greek Parthenon, and Roman Colosseum are all immense structures that required organization and many associated industries for their completion. Chances are, though, the coordination and production requirements of these wonders of the world were not much different than what we expect today in modern manufacturing. Then, as now, resource management included labor, materials, physical plant, and administration. The mystery, of course, lies in the question of how the sheer size of these projects and the resources they necessitated allowed for successful coordination. For example, the various data centers for the building of the Pyramids, like all other great ancient structures, were geographically dispersed with, of course, no form of immediate production communication available.
We also know that ancient productions were not lean operations, and the subsequent progression of manufacturing production technique moved very slowly over the centuries. The major change in production development from Dynastic Egypt to Depression America was in the capability of producing more items in the same amount of time despite working within the same generally inefficient system. And, though he is considered the father of the modern manufacturing system, not even Henry Ford's assembly-line system resulted in cost reductions through continuous improvement and the elimination of waste. Rather, while Ford is credited with being the first to employ the procurement of raw materials just in time for use in production (JIT), he was still quite inflexible when it came to evolving his overall production style and management to meet a changing society and economy. As an automobile company, Ford also maintained large quantities of finished goods inventories, with profits resulting mainly through economies of scale-not reduction of waste.
It was the post-World War II advent of lean manufacturing that introduced the notion of significant profit enhancement through waste reduction in the entire organization. In what later became known as the quality movement, manufacturers (particularly those in Japan) discovered that workers had much more than muscle to contribute to a company. They could, in fact, contribute ideas and greater efficiencies in the manufacturing process through their actions, especially if they were teamed together in smaller units or cells. In addition, many companies realized that the limited, specialized production of only one item (i.e., Ford's approach), created problems of its own and was a philosophy susceptible to the vagaries of an ever-increasing global economy. Through the 1960's, diversification of the shop floor became the mantra of new manufacturing process, and with diversification came more problems-those associated with the set-up (and break-down) conversion times of computer numerical control machining tools.
So, with considerations of materials management, labor time and costing, and large scale pull-production incorporating JIT approaches to inventory, by the late 1970's manufacturers saw themselves as part and parcel of a seemingly never ending cycle-stream of materials providers-members of the supply chain. To streamline production operations, improve on-time delivery within the supply chain, and to ensure greater profit margins through waste reduction, enterprise resource planning (ERP) emerged as a software concept for every sort and size of company. ERP software was designed to take what heretofore had been disparate data from separate areas of the manufacturing operation (i.e., production, inventory, shipping, administration, etc.), and coalesce it into one central point for the real-time interpretation of it all.
Today, ERP software offerings run the gamut, from simple single-module spreadsheet data entry for a sole proprietor job shop, to massive custom programs handling tens of thousands employees and hundreds of processes across dozens of multi-national facilities. While the former is made more aware of basic business functions and profit/loss through simple bookkeeping computations, the latter requires the automation of advanced and robust ERP software to keep the organization in line and on track. Located between these two extremes are packaged ERP solutions that offer the combination of performance and value for small to medium sized business needs. The best of these are customizable to a certain degree in order to provide a better interface with business operations.
Ultimately, ERP software solutions are designed to bring together all of the data generated by the organization into one, manageable database. In turn, this allows for better production planning, and much quicker reaction time as problems emerge. ERP software streamlines the modern manufacturing operation through constant communication, and does it in such a way that the ancient world could never dream of. In Part II, we will explore the particulars of modern ERP and the software developed today for its facilitation.
http://globalshopsolutions.com/
Dusty Alexander is the President of Global Shop Solutions. Global Shop Solutions is the largest privately held ERP software company in the United States.
Copyright 2007 - Global Shop Solutions. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. Reprint Rights: You may reprint this article as long as you leave all of the links active, do not edit the article in any way, and give the author name credit.
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By Dusty Alexander
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