Increasing Functional Specificity over Increasingly Commoditized Hardware - Guide to Cloud Computing for Business and Technology Managers - page 20

TABLE 1.1
Evolution of Enterprise Systems

Primary Business
Need(s) System Scope Enabling Technology

MRP Efficiency, Inventory

management and
production planning
and control

Mainframe computers,
batch processing,
traditional file systems

MRP II Efficiency,

effectiveness, and
integration of
manufacturing
systems

Extending to the
entire
manufacturing firm
(becoming
cross-functional)

Mainframes and
minicomputers, real-time
(time-sharing) processing,
database management
systems (relational)

ERP Efficiency,

(primarily
back-office),
effectiveness, and
integration of all
organizational
systems

Entire organization
(increasingly
cross-functional),
both manufacturing
and
nonmanufacturing
operations

Mainframes, mini- and
microcomputers, client/
server networks with
distributed processing
and distributed
databases, data
warehousing, mining,
knowledge management

ERP II Efficiency,

effectiveness, and
integration within
and among
enterprises

Entire organization
extending to other
organizations
(cross-functional
and cross-enterprise
partners, suppliers,
customers, etc.)

Mainframes, client/server
systems, distributed
computing, knowledge
management, Internet
technology (includes
intranets, extranets,
portals)

Inter-
Enterprise
Resource
Planning,
Enterprise
Systems,
Supply Chain
Management,
or whatever
label gains
common
acceptance

Efficiency,
effectiveness,
coordination, and
integration within
and among all
relevant supply
chain members as
well as other
partners or
stakeholders on a
global scale

Entire organization
and its constituents
(increasingly global
and cross-cultural)
comprising global
supply chain from
beginning to end as
well as other
industry and
government
constituents

Internet, Service Oriented
Architecture, Application
Service Providers,
wireless networking,
mobile wireless,
knowledge management,
grid computing, artificial
intelligence

As MRP systems became popular and more and more compa-
nies started using them, practitioners, vendors, and researchers
started to realize that the data and information produced by
the MRP system in the course of material requirements plan-
ning and production scheduling could be augmented with additional
data and used for other purposes. One of the earliest add-ons was the