Impact of advances in information and computer technology on production planning and control systemsTechnology advancement has increased greatly over the last couple of decade; these advances has had an impact on music, art, science, media, entertainment and manufacturing and a seemingly endless number of other fields. However, the aim of this literature review is to assess the impact of information and computer technology on production planning and control systems.A production planning and control system is concerned with planning and controlling all aspects of manufacturing, including materials, scheduling machines and people, and coordinating suppliers and customers. According ...view middle of the document...
ERP improves the efficiency of all four major activities of production planning and control mentioned above. An example of a benefit of the system is in counteracting the bullwhip effect. Since information is fed to all parties at once there is no need for estimation or forecasting which causes the inefficiencies that are produced when the bullwhip effect occurs.Reid and sanders gives the examples of companies who cut costs and increased profit by utilizing ERP. Firstly in the case of Master Product Company whose sales increased by 20% while inventory decreased by 30%, when ERP was first introduced into their company. Moreover, Owens Corning boasts a sixty five million dollar savings after they integrated their system using Enterprise resource planning. It follows that the main advantages of ERP systems are lower costs, increased sales, and increase the information sharing throughout the company all leading to higher profits.Another impact technology has made in PPC systems is with customer relationship management which relates to specific software that enables firms to keep track of customer specific data. An example of this in practice is in hotels where customer information such as certain preferences is stored allowing the hotel to better cater to returning customers. In a study done by Lee and Lambert on 'the influence of technology enabled customer relationship management on customers' attitude toward service quality and loyalty', they found that customers perceived service quality to be higher in firms who used CRM technology in comparison to non CRM companies. Furthermore a link was found between perceived service quality and customer loyalty consequently leading to the conclusion that firms that utilised customer relationship management technology would gain more customer loyalty because of the high quality service that can be given through the use of CRM.Lee and Lambert used a restaurant, 'Avery's restaurant' as an example of how CRM could be used to improve customer satisfaction. They noted that the restaurant had implemented CRM which was used to keep track of customer names, preferences, and food and beverage orders. The information is stored in a database and could be retrieved once the customer has signed up for the customer service program. When the customer visits the restaurant the employees will already have their information stored and with a swipe of the customer's service card can access it to best serve the customer.Another organization where CRM technology is used is FedEx. They use CRM in their call centres where call centre reps can instantaneously pull up a caller's profile, including information on their number of outstanding packages, their annual shipping bill, and customer's annual revenue. FedEx has saved a lot of money using CRM systems with the number of incoming calls being reduced by 89,000 daily, or about 13%.The third system being discussed is Material Requirement Plann...
