TABLE OF CONTENTS By the early 1980s, research on production scheduling had arrived at the point that generalpurpose software could be written to solve a family of problems and do it on an inexpensive smallcomputer. Perhaps the best-known early packaged tool was Schedulex from Numetrix, Inc. (now part ofPeopleSoft). It could address several types of finite capacity scheduling problems (as well asdealing with the management of one inventory for each item), and it offered a broad range ofheuristic scheduling techniques that had been developed by industrial researchers.
Meanwhile, a production/distribution/inventory solver was being offered as semi-packagedsoftware (by Analysis, Research, & Computation, Inc.) and later evolved into packaged softwareto solve the general problem of integrated tactical planning. Other techniques were developed. Forexample, by combining a decision-making heuristic with a network linear program, certain types offinite capacity master schedules could be created very quickly on a personal computer (ClevelandConsulting Associates). Other heuristics were developed to combine finite scheduling of the plantwith MRP-type BOM explosions and material availability constraints to permit more realisticplanning of complex plants (i2 Technologies).
As we entered the 1990s, all of these techniques achieved a degree of commercial success formany packaged software providers and began to impact how companies planned product flow. Theybecame known as advanced planning systems or advanced planning and scheduling (APS either way) andlater as supply chain planning (SCP) systems the planning subset (as opposed to the executionsubset) of supply chain management software. Different tools were interfaced (to...
