Inflation’s Demise: The Impact on Business Informa
Inflation occurs when an abundance of money exists in relation to goods. This creates artificial demand as consumers accelerate their purchases to avoid future price increases. Suppliers, competing to meet this demand, confront temporary capacity shortages that they alleviate by shifting resources to higher-margin goods and raising the prices of lower-margin goods. In addition, they accelerate purchases of material to avert shortages and avoid future price increases. These actions create additional demand for goods, perpetuating the inflationary cycle.
Today's ERP systems originated from Material Requirements Planning (MRP) and Manufacturing Resources Planning (MRP-II) techniques developed in the 1970s and early 1980s. They focus on improving the accuracy, speed and visibility of short- to medium-term resource planning and allocation decisions, thereby improving management's ability to confidently make profitable commercial decisions. They also focus on minimizing operating costs, and maximizing short- to medium-term revenues, through improved coordination and execution of daily sales, engineering, procurement, production, logistics, maintenance and accounting activities. In short, they are designed to maximize profits by timing business events so exactly that productive resources are committed as late as possible, but never too late to miss profitable sales opportunities.
These are very important business problems during inflationary times, because one or two avoidable, critical resource shortages could mean a missed sale and reduced ability to recover fixed costs. For example, accidental over-commitment of a bottleneck work-center or shipping vessel may delay the arrival of finished goods and cause upstream work-centers to shut down until the backlog is cleared. The cost of underutilized upstream capacity is still incurred, even if production or shipping delays cause lost or delayed revenues.
Prices stabilize or fall when an abundance of goods exists in relation to money. This artificially reduces demand as consumers postpone their purchases in anticipation of even lower prices. Suppliers, challenged to recover their fixed costs, now have excess capacity. They respond by cutting the prices of goods, especially their high-margin products, in order to stimulate sales. In addition, they decelerate their own purchases of material to use-up existing stocks, and await future price decreases. These actions further postpone the demand for goods, setting the stage for a deflationary cycle.
At this writing, Asia and other developing regions are slowly recovering from an acute recession and strong deflationary pressure, while other regions (notably, the United States) continue to enjoy robust growth and modest inflation. This disequilibrium has created a combination of inflationary as well as deflationary pressures throughout the world. For instance, demand for goods remains strong in the United States because buyers there still have inflationary expectations. Asian suppliers have cut prices in order to boost export sales and utilize excess capacity.
If, as many believe, the world is in transition from inflation to price stability or perhaps deflation, how will business priorities be affected before, during, and after the transition? How will changes in business priorities affect ERP system requirements?
Today's ERP systems originated from Material Requirements Planning (MRP) and Manufacturing Resources Planning (MRP-II) techniques developed in the 1970s and early 1980s. They focus on improving the accuracy, speed and visibility of short- to medium-term resource planning and allocation decisions, thereby improving management's ability to confidently make profitable commercial decisions. They also focus on minimizing operating costs, and maximizing short- to medium-term revenues, through improved coordination and execution of daily sales, engineering, procurement, production, logistics, maintenance and accounting activities. In short, they are designed to maximize profits by timing business events so exactly that productive resources are committed as late as possible, but never too late to miss profitable sales opportunities.
These are very important business problems during inflationary times, because one or two avoidable, critical resource shortages could mean a missed sale and reduced ability to recover fixed costs. For example, accidental over-commitment of a bottleneck work-center or shipping vessel may delay the arrival of finished goods and cause upstream work-centers to shut down until the backlog is cleared. The cost of underutilized upstream capacity is still incurred, even if production or shipping delays cause lost or delayed revenues.
Prices stabilize or fall when an abundance of goods exists in relation to money. This artificially reduces demand as consumers postpone their purchases in anticipation of even lower prices. Suppliers, challenged to recover their fixed costs, now have excess capacity. They respond by cutting the prices of goods, especially their high-margin products, in order to stimulate sales. In addition, they decelerate their own purchases of material to use-up existing stocks, and await future price decreases. These actions further postpone the demand for goods, setting the stage for a deflationary cycle.
At this writing, Asia and other developing regions are slowly recovering from an acute recession and strong deflationary pressure, while other regions (notably, the United States) continue to enjoy robust growth and modest inflation. This disequilibrium has created a combination of inflationary as well as deflationary pressures throughout the world. For instance, demand for goods remains strong in the United States because buyers there still have inflationary expectations. Asian suppliers have cut prices in order to boost export sales and utilize excess capacity.
If, as many believe, the world is in transition from inflation to price stability or perhaps deflation, how will business priorities be affected before, during, and after the transition? How will changes in business priorities affect ERP system requirements?
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