Production Planning through Customized ERP at a Nordic Manufacturing Company

The enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions that gained acceptance in industries world over as they represent a proven, comprehensive, software backbone for achieving excellence in key business areas, have moved forward today to higher levels of innovation and technologies. The management of procurement, manufacturing, product development, finance, sales and service with various ERP modules together with complexities of operations across corporate boundaries and intense global competition have all resulted in a continuing erp discourse developed in relation to both theory and practice. This paper aims to contribute an empirical study and explore the vital process of production planning in a customized erp environment. In doing so, it takes a qualitative methodology in the form of the case of a Nordic (Northern European) log house manufacturing company. The favourable ERP implementation in the company tends to justify the customizing of applications at early phase instead of adopting the standard erp package despite the wide scope of the standard packages. The research findings insinuate preference for customized erp over standard ERP package for enabling effective generation of production plans.