356 Making it Happend

many individual components being identified only after preliminary design
work is complete.
ENTERPRISE RESOURCE PLANNING (ERP) predicts and balances demand
and supply. It is an enterprise-wide set of forecasting, planning,
and scheduling tools, which:
• links customers and suppliers into a complete supply chain,
• employs proven processes for decision-making, and
• coordinates sales, marketing, operations, logistics, purchasing, finance,
product development, and human resources.
It’s goals include high levels of customer service, productivity, cost reduction,
and inventory turnover, and it provides the foundation for effective
supply chain management and e-commerce. It does this by
developing plans and schedules so that the right resources—manpower,
materials, machinery, and money—are available in the right amount
when needed.
Enterprise Resource Planning is a direct outgrowth and extension of
Manufacturing Resource Planning and, as such, includes all of MRP II’s
capabilities. ERP is more powerful in that it: a) applies a single set of resource
planning tools across the entire enterprise, b) provides real time
integration of sales, operating, and financial data, and c) connects resource
planning approaches to the extended supply chain of customers
and suppliers.
FINAL ASSEMBLY SCHEDULE (FAS) Also referred to as the finishing
schedule as it may include other operations than simply the final operation.
For make-to-order products, it is prepared after receipt of a customer
order, is constrained by the availability of material and capacity,
and it schedules the operations required to complete the product from the
level where it is stocked (or master scheduled) to the end item level.
FINITE LOADING Conceptually, the term means putting no more work
into a work center than it can be expected to execute. The specific term
usually refers to a computer technique that involves automatic plant priority
revision in order to level load operation-by-operation. Also called
finite scheduling.
GROUP TECHNOLOGY An engineering and manufacturing approach that
identifies the sameness of parts, equipment, or processes. It provides for
rapid retrieval of existing designs and facilitates a cellular form of production
equipment layout.
HEDGE 1) In master scheduling, a quantity of stock used to protect
against uncertainty in demand. The hedge is similar to safety stock, except
that a hedge has the dimension of timing as well as amount. 2) In