Information Technology (IT)

IT is enabling fundamental changes in how the work is carried out. The activities most susceptible to change, according to Oliveira (1996), are those intensive in information and can distinguish three groups.

A first group relates to the production: physical (increasingly affected by the robotics and control instrumentation), the production of information (influenced by computers in bureaucratic tasks such as accounts receivable, accounts payable, billing, and others) and the production of knowledge (CAD, CAM, credit analysis and risk, software production, etc.).

The second group refers to coordination; telecommunications is the main instrument of change that affects the physical distance, the nature of time on the job, which stores more information and organizational memory maintained by databases.

Finally, the third group refers to the management: it affects both the direction, which allows monitoring the environment and making decisions to adapt the organization to the environment, and the control that measures performance and compares with the plans to maintain the desired direction.

The information supports the decision, as a production factor, influences the behavior of people and become an important vector because it can increase the synergy or cancel the results of all these.

• Application of IT in Production

Information Technology (IT) contributes towards making logistics more efficient and effective in the generation of value within a company. As a result, there are numerous IT systems available for application in logistics. IT applications related to output operationalize the different models used in the Production Planning and Control (PPC). In this sense, the emergence of systems MRP (Materials Requirements Planning), even in 70 years, allowed to equate the problem of calculating material requirements for product mix production. MRP systems evolved into MRP II systems, which have been given greater coverage, including the aspects of planning such as capacity planning (CRP - Capacity Requirements Planning), and allowing the management of other resources (equipment, labor-intensive etc.), and materials.

MRPII systems were the state of art instrument in terms of production planning, especially in intermittent production systems. On the beginning of the 80th, come to rival the just-in-time (JIT), introduced by the Japanese to control inventory in automobile production. The next step was the inclusion of various other aspects, such as accounting, finance, business, human resources, engineering, among others. This new generation of systems were called "ERP", generically called Enterprise Management Systems (Laurindo & Mesquita, 2000).

The next evolution in IT is integrating the various stages of the supply chain, initially by now via EDI and B2B e-commerce - business to business. Porter (1999) consider the key area of PPC for companies, and classifications of the types of manufacturing must be related to the choice of information systems for PPC to be adopted.

A recent alternative for integration systems strategy is the best of breed (BoB), in which the best solutions are obtained for each part of the company and incorporated later (Light et al., 2001). It is worth quoting the application integration APS (Advanced Planning and Scheduling) with ERP systems in order to get more elaborate solutions for PPC (Wiers, 2002).

• Conclusion

For some time, IT was considered a mere item of support to the organization, which did not generate any return for the business. This picture began to change from the time when IT applications were no longer just a way to automate tasks and began to contribute and enrich the entire organizational process, optimizing activities and reducing the cost of internal and external communication.

Companies have recognized the importance of these investments to optimize their efficiency levels and increase their competitiveness, but in general, IT alone is not able to generate profits for business. To provide effective results, we need systems and solutions that are directly associated with an organizational goal. In this sense, the technological capability influences the strategies of the organization to structure a relationship to the dynamic nature of adding value to the various organizational practices.

In conclusion, IT is permeating the value chain in each of its points, transforming the way activities are performed and the nature of the interconnections between them. IT is also affecting the competitive scope and reshaping the way products and services meet customer needs. These basic effects explain why IT has acquired a strategic significance, and differs from many other technologies used in business.