Supply-chain management at Rowntree: critical success factors for APL

  • Authors:

  • Adrian Smith

  • Affiliations:

  • Operational Research Department, Rowntree Mackintosh Limited, York, YO1 1XY, England, United Kingdom

  • Venue:
  • APL '91 Proceedings of the international conference on APL '91
  • Year:
  • 1991

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Abstract

APL has been in use at Rowntree Mackintosh since late 1978; during this time it has developed from an initial application to "little local systems" to play a vital role in the supply-chain management of the company. APL systems are now deeply embedded in all stages of company operations, from recipe modelling to the scheduling of raw materials, from five-year planning to detailed shift-by-shift production scheduling.This paper sets out to explain the critical success factors which encouraged the directors of Rowntree Mackintosh to entrust such a vital part of their business operations to an obscure Greek language which executes backwards.