Serve Your Supply Chain, Not Operations

Abstract

This chapter describes a successfully completed proof of concept supply chain integration pilot project started in February 1997 and completed in August 1998 at Noramco, a manufacturing division of General Pump Corporation. Much has been written in the last decade to promote the abandonment of MRP II systems (Costanza 1998, Dibono 1997, Studebaker 1997, Gumaer, 1996, Stein 1996, Copacino 1996, Steudel and Desruelle 1992, Gunn 1987, Goldratt 1984) and encourage such alternative production planning and control practices as Lean Production, Demand Flow Management, Theory of Constraints and Synchronous Manufacturing. It presents results of research and implementation of such alternative methods of production planning and control. These alternative methods were evaluated for their ability to support products manufactured by Noramco. The main focus of this project effort was to establish characteristics of Noramco’s supply chain and implement process changes to meet optimized requirements of their supply chain (Michel 1997, Poirier and Reiter 1996, and Maynard 1996).

Adapted from the paper by authors: Kumar, Sameer, Chandra, Charu and Stoerzinger, Michael, (2001), “Serve Your Supply Chain, Not Operations — A Case Study”, Industrial Management and Data Systems, Vol. 101, No. 8, pp. 414–425.