Introduction
Over the past 10 years a great number of businesses ranging from SMEs to Blue Chips have been rolling out or updating their Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Distribution Requirements Planning (DRP) and Advanced Supply Chain Planning solutions (APS). There are a variety of reasons for this intense activity, ranging from the need to consolidate IT following an acquisition, through to the desire to improve the IT capability in order to implement a particular supply chain strategy.
When the dust settles after the implementation many businesses, having spent a lot of time and money, are left with a very inflexible IT solution whose core planning principles are routed in the thinking of the late 60s, and not compatible with the agile, flexible, supply chain processes required to be competitive today.
It seems that our understanding of what is required to build a competitive supply chain has evolved considerably over the past 40 years, however the range of IT solutions available to support our ambitions has not.
This white paper examines the key elements required to build a successful and low cost supply chain, how the majority of IT offerings...