Yet, in manufacturing, production priorities
and materials planning are only part of the problem.
Capacity planning represents an equal challenge.
In response, techniques for capacity planning
were added to the basic MRP system capabilities.
Tools were developed to support the planning of
aggregate sales and production levels (sales and
operations planning), the development of the
specific build schedule (master production scheduling),
forecasting, sales planning and customerorder
promising (demand management), and
high-level resource analysis (rough-cut capacity
planning). Scheduling techniques for the factory
floor and supplier scheduling were incorporated
into the MRP systems. When this occurred, users
began to consider their systems as company-wide
systems. These developments resulted in the next
evolutionary stage that became known as closedloop
MRP