Page 202 - Orlicky's Material Requirements Planning

C HAP TE R 10

A New Way of

Looking at Things

Before the advent of the computer, production and inventory control methods and sys-
tems were relatively ineffective. However, capital was available and relatively cheap,
costs were not a serious problem, and customers were more tolerant of poor deliveries.
Planning and control methods were crude and constrained by primitive data-processing
tools (clerks and paper files) that were incapable of handling massive amounts of data.
Theory and principles were lacking, and the only rigorous techniques known were
machine loading (based on work standards, ca. 1900), economic order quantities (1915),
and statistical safety stocks (1934). The ability to correlate multiple plans was nonexistent.
The availability of computers in the 1950s represented a lifting of the previous infor-
mation-processing constraint, which presaged the impending obsolescence of older
methods and techniques of production and inventory management. Business computers
and software became available in the early 1960s and were applied by many companies
to their planning activities. Fore casting, economic order quantity (EOQ), and safety-stock
calculations were speeded up and made more frequently. Unfortunately, the gains were
minimal at a fairly high cost. These methods and systems had been devised in light of the
information-processing tools available at the time, and they suffered from a lack of abili-
ty to correlate and handle data on the massive scale required. This constraint of the tools,
which affects the efficacy of methods and systems, also governs the way people look at
things, perceive problems, and formulate solutions to those problems at a given point in
time. The constraint of the tools is reflected in the thought and literature of an era.
The introduction of computers into production and inventory control work repre-
sented a sudden increase—by orders of magnitude—in the power of available tools. In
the late 1950s, the constraint of the tools was lifted and a new era began. The new tools
were applied to solving old problems, and eventually, solutions were devised for even
those which in the past had been the most baffling and stubborn. Today, there exist solu-

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