The GCS2 Assumes that SCM Planning, and Execution (Transactional) Systems Should Feed Each Other But As Separate Entities
Supply Chain Management pioneers from Plossel to Wight gave us a magnificent body of theory even though they referred to it as Production & Inventory Control (PIM), MRP, MRPII, etc. However, there is much that they left undefined such as: what should be the right periodicity? weekly? By-weekly? monthly?, what structure should the S&OP have?: should it be in-line?, consensual?), or even: how should the Demand be integrated and structured?? Or even: what should its role be? Should Sales sell what it can and hope that there is enough of the right inventory? Or should try to achieve the plan and work out ? Furthermore the system resources were limited in the 60’s and 70’s so it was never addressed as it is now. The proliferation of specialized systems has increase at a rate equal to technology. From WMS, CRM, RFID, etc., to Cloud-Based applications. However, one of the most difficult decisions in this area is how to visualize the SCM Planning system with the ERP (transactional) system. From the early stages with the advent of Legacy systems and the standardization of accounting it was thought that the same (consolidation) could be done with the other areas of the enterprise and, therefore, the ERP. However, as the ERP developers have been finding out through experience they are not the same entities and cannot be consolidated well. The fact that different SCM model designs requires serious customization of the SCM Planning system led to the development of separation of their entities – although united – such as SAP’s APO.
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