Towill, Denis R., "1961 and all that: The influence of Jay Forrester and John Burbidge on the Design of Modern manufacturing Systems", 1994
ua435
Modern manufacturing systems are expectedto respond rapidly, effectively and efficiently to changes in the marketplace.Simultaneously there is the drive to achieve world class customer servicelevels coupled with minimum reasonable inventory (MRI). We thus have theclassic conflict of interests between marketing off-the-shelf; production isstill all-too-often looking to manufacture in economic batch quantities so asto achieve economies of scale; and the materials management is trying tominimize storage and distribution costs which in turn requires that a totalsystems MRI policy be adopted.