MANUFACTURING GLOSSARY / ERP
ERP: Enterprise resource planning
ERP is business software that coordinates shared records such as orders, purchasing, inventory, production, costing, and finance.
What it means in manufacturing
A manufacturing ERP extends the commercial system of record into bills of material, routings, work orders, material movements, production status, and job cost. Product boundaries vary, so the label alone does not prove a specific workflow.
A question to use in evaluation
Can one representative order be traced from commitment through material, production, release, shipment, and financial reconciliation?
Keep the label and the evidence separate
Category terms describe a type of work; they do not establish what a specific software release, configuration, integration, or customer process can do. Test the proposed boundary with representative records, responsible owners, failure cases, and written acceptance criteria.
Your next step
Test the definition against your operation.
Use a real workflow to determine where the record lives, who decides, and what evidence the proposed scope must retain.