Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP 2) is defined by the American Production and Inventory Control Society as an effective method for planning all of a manufacturing company's resources (Higgins, Leroy, and Tierny 1996). Ideally, it addresses unit operational planning, financial management and forecasting, business and production planning, overhead and capacity requirements planning, labor costing, order processing, time and attendance control in-store, performance measurement and sales planning. Output data from business and production planning, master scheduling, material requirements planning, and capacity planning are integrated with financial reports such as business plans, purchase commitment reports, shipping budgets, inventory, and dollar projections. It also descends from the MRP (Material Requirement Planning) system, a set of techniques that uses bills of material, data, inventory, and a master production schedule to calculate material requirements in a manufacturing company. Simply put, the entire task of productive resource planning involves the co...