During the late 80s and throughout the 90s information technology changed modern manufacturing organizations dramatically. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems became the major backbone technology for nearly every type of transaction. Customer orders, purchase orders, receipts, invoices etc. are maintained and processed by ERP systems provided by software vendors -like Baan, J. D. Edwards, Oracle, SAP AG and many more. ERP systems integrate many processes, even those that span multiple functional areas in an organization, and provide a consistent database for corporate wide data. By that ERP systems help to integrate internal processes in an organization.Mid of the 90s it became apparent that focussing on the integration of internal processes alone does not lead to a drastic improvement of business performance. While ERP systems are supporting the standard business workflows, the biggest impact on business performance is created by exceptions and variability, e. g. customers order more than expected, suppliers deliver later than promised, production capacity is reduced by an unforeseen breakdown of equipment etc. The correct reaction to exceptions like these can save a lot of money and increase the service level and will help to improve sales and profits. Furthermore, state-of-the-art planning procedures -for planning sales, internal operations and supply from the vendors well in advancereduce the amount of exceptional situations, helping to keep business in a standard mode of operation and turning out to be more profitable than constantly dealing with exceptional situations.This functionality -powerful planning procedures and methodologies as well as quick reactions to exceptions and variability -is provided by Advanced Planning Systems. An Advanced Planning System (APS) exploits the consistent database and integrated standard workflows provided by ERP systems Preface IX to leverage high velocity in industry. Due to these recent developments, software vendors of APS boost a major breakthrough in enterprise wide planning and even collaborative planning between the partners along a supply chain.Do APS hold the promises? What are the concepts underlying these new planning systems? How do APS and ERP systems interact, and how do APS supplement ERP systems? What are the current limits of APS and what is required to introduce an APS in a manufacturing organization successfully?These were the questions we asked ourselves when we started our project on "Supply Chain Management and Advanced Planning" in summer 1998. Since we realized that there were many more interested in this new challenging field, the idea of publishing this book was born.This book is the result of collaborative work done by members of four consultancy companies -aconis, j & m Management Consulting, KPMG and PRTM -and three universities -University of Augsburg, Darmstadt University of Technology and Georgia Institute of Technology. Our experiences stem from insights gained by utilizing, testing and implementing several modules of APS from i2 Tec...