Fuzzy technologies and their advantages in commercial advanced planning systems (APS)

Enterprise wide planning systems imply many functions that cannot be covered by exact mathematical expressions. Instead there are functions like forecasting, estimating, optimizing, etc., which are based on experience of past situations depending on complex influences and cannot easily be taken into account by simple mathematical methods. In these entire cases fuzzy-logic can help to define a set of rules, dependencies and conclusions. The application of fuzzy technologies in advanced planning systems (APS) is not yet common, but there are some other mathematical methods which can be described to solve the usability problem. The fuzzy approach is somehow universal in its application, which means, how ever the complexity of the relation between the known parameters and the unknown "X" is, it can be modeled in fuzzy technology. In addition, there are not much mathematical skills necessary to use the fuzzy method. Instead of mathematical formulas, a graphical, user-friendly interface is used to simplify the application. The main advantage of using the fuzzy-technology is its reproducibility, which can be used to further develop, maintain and optimize the tasks like "forecasting", "estimating" and so on.