Production Planning through Customized ERP at a Nordic Manufacturing Company

The enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions that gained acceptancein industries world over as they represent a proven, comprehensive,software backbone for achieving excellence in keybusiness areas, have moved forward today to higher levels of innovationand technologies. The management of procurement,manufacturing, product development, finance, sales and servicewith various erp modules together with complexities of operationsacross corporate boundaries and intense global competitionhave all resulted in a continuing erp discourse developed in relationto both theory and practice. This paper aims to contributean empirical study and explore the vital process of productionplanning in a customized erp environment. In doing so, it takes aqualitative methodology in the form of the case of a Nordic (NorthernEuropean) log house manufacturing company. The favourableerp implementation in the company tends to justify the customizingof applications at early phase instead of adopting the standardERP package despite the wide scope of the standard packages.The research findings insinuate preference for customizederp over standard ERP package for enabling effective generationof production plans.