Page 15 - Orlicky's Material Requirements Planning

xiv Foreword

Enterprise Resource Planning in the 1990s as software companies added an ever-wider
range of supporting applications to better coordinate all of the activities of a manufac-
turing enterprise and supply chain to the task of meeting product availability and cus-
tomer service objectives. But MRP is still at the heart of all of these modern processes. The
fundamentals of “what do we need and when do we need it” cannot be denied. Inventory
availability and the bill of materials are still the basic considerations.
Sure, manufacturing has changed in the last 30 years and clever and sophisticated
techniques for planning and execution continue to emerge. But nothing has replaced the
basic logic and application of MRP—it is still the backbone of ERP and supply chain man-
agement and is not made unnecessary by the theory of constraints, Lean, pull, kanban,
demand-flow, or any other “modern” approach to production and manufacturing.
And, yes, MRP-based applications today are certainly faster and more capable than
the early products of the first Orlicky MRP era. But the fundamentals remain. This third
edition presents those fundamentals and then goes on to explore both the good and the
not-so-good about material requirements planning in today’s fast-paced, global, Internet-
connected supply chains as well as some emerging techniques that build on MRP with
additional facilities to make it work better in today’s world.
I’ve known Carol Ptak for many years and I can’t think of anyone more qualified to
update this classic work for today’s manufacturing environment. She is both an experi-
enced manufacturing management practitioner and a true thought leader. She practical-
ly invented the term demand driven and truly understands the benefits and limitations of
MRP, ERP, TOC, SCM, APS and the rest of the galaxy of acronymic techniques and theo-
ries as they apply to the challenges facing manufacturing companies in the twenty-first
century. Chad Smith is also a thought leader with impressive credentials in the advance-
ment of constraint-based manufacturing theory and practice.
I fully expect that Orlicky's Material Requirements Planning, Third Edition, which you
now hold in your hand, will once again become the definitive reference for the next gen-
eration of manufacturing practitioners and leaders, and I am extremely pleased to be
associated with this effort. I believe that true innovation and advancement are built on a
solid understanding of the fundamental thinking and processes that have been success-
ful in the past. I am confident that the manufacturing industry will continue to innovate
and new theories and processes will emerge as new tools (faster and cheaper computers,
enhanced communications, more ubiquitous autoID technologies) become available. Yet,
I know that the fundamental ideas behind MRP will endure. It is a true benefit to the
industry to have this updated standard reference to keep that definition alive and to edu-
cate succeeding generations on the ABCs of MRP.

Dave Turbide, CFPIM, CMfgE, CIRM, CSCP