How ERP Evolved

 In my view, The ERP started evolving from the days when we started writing the software to manage the multiple aspects of the business. I would say any software which tend to take care of multiple aspects of the business is an ERP. It is an outcome of 40 years of trial and error. It has evolved as a strategic tool because of continuous improvement in the available techniques to manage business and the fast growth of information technology. I feel that the manufacturing industry contributed a lot for Evolution of ERP because they required the integrated software rather than any other industry.

Prior to 1960s, business had to rely on the traditional ways of inventory management to ensure smooth functioning of the organization. These theories are called classical inventory management of scientific inventory control methods. The most popularly known amongst them is EOQ (Economic Order Quantity).
In this method, each item in the stock is analyzed for its ordering cost and the inventory carrying cost. A trade off is established on a phased out expected demand of one year, and this way the most economic ordering quantity can be decided. This technique in principle is a deterministic way of managing inventory.

In 1960s, a new technique of Material Requirements Planning, popularly known as MRP, was evolved. This was a proactive manner of inventory management. This technique fundamentally explodes the end product demand obtained from the Master Production Schedule (MPS) for a specified product structure (which is taken from Bill of Material) into a detailed schedule of purchase orders or production orders, taking into account the inventory on hand. MRP is a simple logic but the magnitude of data involved in a realistic situation makes it computationally cumbersome. If undertaken manually, the entire process is highly time-consuming.
 

But MRP successfully demonstrated its effectiveness which led to the reduction of inventory, production, and delivery lead times by improving coordination and avoiding delays, thus making commitments more realistic. MRP proved to be a very good technique for managing inventory, but it did not take into account other resources of an organization. This gave birth to a modified MRP logic, popularly known as closed loop MRP. In this technique, the capacity of the organization to produce a particular product is also taken into account by incorporating a module called capacity requirements planning (CRP).
 

Later, the need was felt to integrate the financial resource with the manufacturing activities. From this evolved an integrated manufacturing management system called Manufacturng Resource Planning (MRP II).
 

Transition from MRPII to ERP happened during 1980-90.  The shortcomings of MRP II and the need to integrate new the various processes in the organization led to the development of a total integrated solution called ERP, 

There are many new age ERP packages which is a complete integrated solution which attempts  to integrate the transactions of the organization to produce the best possible plan. Today we see further development in the ERP concept which led to the birth of new industry based solutions and evolution web-based ERP, Further to this there are several other concepts which evolve around ERP, BPM- Business Process Management is a best example for this.

Now there are many many ERP Products available in the Market, the main competition is among the 2 big players, SAP and Oracle. modern day ERP grows by providing the solutions for different business areas such as Industry Specific Solutions, trading, CRM, SRM and so on.

Note : most of the above information was obtained  from many other sources in internet.