Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is the logical capability of running the transactional backbone of the enterprise — finance, procurement, inventory, manufacturing orders, sales orders, payroll — on one shared data model. PLM and ERP are complementary: PLM owns the engineering definition of the product (parts, BOMs, drawings, change records), while ERP owns the transactional execution (purchase orders, inventory levels, cost rollups, work orders).

What it covers

• Financials — general ledger, accounts payable/receivable, cost accounting.
• Materials — inventory, purchasing, receiving, and supplier master data.
• Manufacturing — work orders, MRP runs, capacity planning, shop-floor control.
• Order-to-cash and procure-to-pay transactional flows.
• Master data — material master, vendor master, customer master shared with PLM.

Relationships (see sidebar)

• Supports BOM Management, Manufacturing Execution, and Supplier Development.
• The bridge from PLM is the ERP/PDM Integration capability — typically publishing released parts, BOMs, and ECOs to the ERP material master.
• Drives MRP runs from the released MBOM and effectivity data.