Content area
Full Text
PASSWORD
Richard Henning is president, Henning industrial Software Inc. (Hudson, OH)1 a developer of ERP and shop management software solutions for manufacturing.
Manufacturing Engineering: Describe shop management software.
Richard Henning: When first introduced, manufacturing software systems only ran on very expensive mainframe or minicomputers. This meant that these early systems were only available to larger manufacturers because of the high cost of hardware, software, and implementation. In those early days, computing was cost-prohibitive for small and medium-sized enterprises, and there were literally no computerized manufacturing systems available for small make-to-order job shops.
In the 1990s, the term Enterprise Resource Planning [ERP] was introduced as more and more aspects of a manufacturing enterprise were supported. This included adding operational routings and support for nonmanufacturing-related areas of an enterprise, such as customer relationship management [CRM], marketing, and human resource management. With the introduction of personal computers in the early 1980s, computing finally became available to small and medium-sized manufacturers. From then to the present, PC-based software systems have been developed that are less costly and typically smaller in scope. These systems primarily have targeted second and third-tier manufacturers, job shops, and mixed-mode discrete manufacturers that make to stock and/or make to order. These PC-based ERP solutions are now commonly referred to as shop management or job shop management software systems. While shop management systems have evolved to encompass many of the same capabilities of today's high-end ERP systems, they have also expandeó into many more niche areas in an effort to better...