Glossary 353

usually accompanied by budgets and a projected balance sheet as well as
a cash flow statement. It is usually stated in dollars. The business plan
and the Sales & Operations Plan, although normally stated in different
units of measure, should be in agreement with each other.
CAD/CAM The integration of Computer Aided Design and Computer
Aided Manufacturing to achieve automation from design through manufacturing.
CAPABLE-TO-PROMISE An advanced form of available-to-promise (ATP).
ATP looks at future production as specified by the master schedule. Capable-
to-promise goes farther: It also looks at what could be produced, out
of available material and capacity, even though not formally scheduled.
This capability is sometimes found in advanced planning systems (APS).
CAPACITY REQUIREMENTS PLANNING The process of determining how
much labor and/or machine resources are required to accomplish the
tasks of production, and making plans to provide these resources. Open
production orders, as well as planned orders in the MRP system, are input
to CRP which translates these orders into hours of work by work center
by time period. In earlier years, the computer portion of CRP was
called infinite loading, a misnomer. This technique is used primarily in
job shops (see Appendix B).
CELLULARMANUFACTURING A method of organizing production equipment
which locates dissimilar equipment together. The goal is to produce
items from start to finish in one sequential flow, as opposed to a traditional
job shop (functional) arrangement which requires moves and queues between
each operation. See Group Technology, Flow Shop, Job Shop.
CLOSED-LOOP MRP The second step in the evolution of ERP. This is a
set of business processes built around Material Requirements Planning
and also including the additional planning functions of production
planning, master scheduling, and Capacity Requirements Planning.
Further, once the planning phase is complete and the plans have been accepted
as realistic and attainable, the execution functions come into
play. These include the plant floor control functions of input-output
measurement, dispatching, plus anticipated delay reports from both the
plant and suppliers, supplier scheduling, and so forth. The term closed
loop implies that not only is each of these elements included in the overall
system but also that there is feedback from the execution functions so
that the planning can be kept valid at all times. See Material Requirements
Planning, Manufacturing Resource Planning, Enterprise Resource
Planning.
COMMON PARTS BILL (OF MATERIAL) A type of planning bill which
groups all common components for a product or family of products into
one bill of material.