Supply Chain Management and Advanced Planning : Concepts, Models, Software, and Case Studies

Supply Chain Management concerns organizational aspects of integratinglegally separated firms as well as coordinating materialand information flows within a production-distribution network.Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP) systems being used for transaction handling and order execution in most firms today havebeen supplemented by Advanced Planning Systems (APS) forcoordinating flows, exploiting bottlenecks and keeping due dates.This book provides insights regarding the concepts underlyingAPS. Special emphasis is given to modelling supply chains andimplementing APS in industry successfully. Understanding is enhancedthrough the use of case studies as well as an introduction to the solutionalgorithms used.For the third edition the content of the book has been updatedthoroughly taking into account latest APS software developments,research results and experiences with APS implementation projects.Two new case studies have been added resulting in a totalof six case studies now covering a wide range of industrial sectorsand ideas to implement APS successfully. Finally, a new chapter on "e;Purchasing & MaterialRequirements Planning"e; complements the description of APS.