
The Role of Technology in the e-Factory
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Most plants in the past have tended to operate in an open-loop fashion
for long periods of time. A production schedule would be produced by a
manufacturing resource planning (MRP) system for a period of one week for
example (or in some cases for one month) by estimating what product needed
to be produced based on sales forecast or trends. At the end of that one-
week production schedule, a new MRP compilation is performed that produces
a new production schedule for the next production period. The new produc-
tion is based on a new forecast less what may have actually been sold or
shipped during the last planning ...