Page 393 - Orlicky's Material Requirements Planning

372 PART 4 Looking Backward and Forward

frequency. The approaches embodied in these techniques and concepts reflect the former
deficiencies of information in attempting to compensate for them by other means. They lost
their relevancy and usefulness, however, once it became feasible, through computer-assist-
ed MRP, to establish and maintain the formerly unavailable information.

THE STORY OF MRP

In rereading the original Orlicky text, as well as the revision by George Plossl, the first-
hand narrative of the history of operations management and system development from
these two men had to be preserved to facilitate understanding of the concepts presented
in this update. For example, below is an excerpt from the original Preface written by
Joseph Orlicky in 1974—almost 40 years before this third edition. The issues he describes
then are even more relevant today.

Someone had to write this book.
Since around 1960, when a few of us pioneered the development and
installation of computer-based MRP systems, time-phased material require-
ments planning has come a long way—as a technique, as an approach, as an
area of new knowledge. From the original handful, the number of MRP sys-
tems used in American industry gradually grew to about 150 in 1971, when
the growth curve began a steep rise as a result of the “MRP Crusade,” a
national program of publicity and education sponsored by the American
Production and Inventory Control Society (APICS).
As this book goes to print, there are some 700 manufacturing companies
or plants that either have implemented, or are committed to implementing,
MRP systems. Material requirements planning has become a new way of life
in production and inventory management, displacing older methods in gen-
eral and statistical inventory control in particular. I, for one, have no doubt
whatever that it will be the way of life in the future.
Thus far, however, the subject of material requirements planning has
been neglected in hard-cover literature and academic curricula, in favor of
techniques that people in industry now consider of low relevance or obsolete.
I suppose one of the reasons for this situation is the subject’s position outside
the scope of quantitative analysis and the view of it as being “vocational”
rather than “scientific.” The subject of production and inventory manage-
ment is, of course, vocational in the sense that the knowledge is intended to
be applied for solving real-life business problems. Like engineering or
surgery, production and inventory management is oriented toward practice.
Unlike many other approaches and techniques, material requirements plan-
ning “works,” which is its best recommendation.
In the field of production and inventory management, literature does
not lead, it follows. The techniques of modern material requirements plan-