INTRODUCTION
          It is a great honor for me to be invited as an industrial engineer to express an opinion in a two up to five pages paper about the PT.Dirgantara Indonesia (I.Ae), on the occasion of its twenty-five years old commemoration day. As an outsider, it is not easy to perceive new paradigm faced by any aircraft manufactures in the world now. New paradigm could mean new business environment as it was formulated by the owner and the management of the company. From the statement of the commitment, profile, the power of Indonesian aerospace industry, review of operations, management personnel, and the network, published by "koinf/Iae./061000, it is clear that PT.Dirgantara Indonesia has a firm perception to enter a new era in the coming decade. In short, the new paradigm is an all-out competitive business environment at home and abroad.

THE PROBLEMS
          In the past, the orientation of the PT. Dirgantara Indonesia was to acquire the capability to manufacture aircraft by using the concept of transferring of technology. Right now, the orientation is to develop an aerospace industry. Are Present Personnel Ready to switch their work orientation ? To be specific, the new orientation is "a more business like one." How to improve earning and profitability of the company ? If present personnel are not fit to the new business orientation, then they should be replaced by a new and different group of people. Another alternative is to train present personnel to adapt new business environment. It is very difficult to change the attitude of people who used to work under different circumstances.

          PT. Dirgantara Indonesia failed to capitalize on new products, held on to legacy too long. It released almost fifty per-cent of its personnel to cut cost and focused its capabilities on building engineering service providers. It announced disappointing earnings and profit after twenty-five years of operation and development since the year of 1976. It h as left itself vulnerable to its more agile competitors. PT. Dirgantara Indonesia has technology, but it has not yet brought it to market effectively and efficiently. It missed the mark on its product and service strategy. It held on to its CN 250 plane for too long. The plane was ready while the company held onto its legacy business. In order for the company to improve its image, it should get the solutions into the market and present customers with success stories.

          PT. Dirgantara Indonesia now has a line of products and services that replaces CN 212 and CN 235. The inability to get these systems to market was part of the company's failure as a successful aircraft manufacturer. Corporate red-tape and a bloated hierarchy not only affected its service provider business; it wallowed in corporate isolation. The company was a victim of its own success in transferring of technology for twenty-five years long. The number of employees grew from less than 1000 to more than 13000. The systems and processes were "fat" and both could not sustain the growth. The management now wants to use fiscal year 2001 as a building year and emerge more focused by eliminating the redundancies in its cost structure. The absence of the company's business and marketing unit might not be the best move since that is where the company weakness lies.

          As. PT. Dirgantara Indonesia rebuilds, other companies selling to world market will use its weak position against it. How can they pull themselves up by their bootstraps ? The company developed a backlog in orders for spare-parts and maintenance works, which brought the company profit margins. The inability to solve shipment and payment problems, finally led to the erosion of revenues and poor financial performance. The result was that other company drained talent away from PT. Dirgantara Indonesia with the promise of a fast growing personal income and option. Another trouble was its unwieldy organizational structure that tried to manage several incongruent business units under one roof. Coordination problems emerged and nobody could solve them. A leaner decision-making structure is needed to allow the company to proceed with its product and service strategy to meet market demand faster.

ENGINEERING RESOURCE PLANNING (ERP)
          A company's overall sales and operating plans needs the support of planning, scheduling, and controlling the engineering resources. Later on, the ERP is integrated with manufacturing resources planning (MRP). With a focus on integrated enterprise management, the use of ERP is increasing steadily in companies ranging from one of a kind engineering development companies to low volume job shops to companies that survive through new product introduction. Companies in both the commercial and aerospace/defense industries are using ERP as competitive weapon in the global industrial war to reduce the time to market for new products and services, and their improvements.

          In companies that produce highly engineered products or that are engaged in the development of new products, engineering activities often account for a mayor portion of program/project costs and schedules. In such companies, product development and engineering activities naturally must precede manufacturing activities. Once the product design is released, engineering must also support on going production and often must service the product in the marketplace.

          Engineering work needs to be planned and scheduled to meet customer need dates. Quite often engineering's customer is the company's manufacturing operation or procurement function, which are driven by the company master production schedule. Typically, the engineering schedules are not fully integrated nor interfaced with the manufacturing and procurement schedules, and engineering often experiences problems in trying to meet the need dates.

          Engineering resources planning is a methodology for planning and scheduling engineering resources which is integrated with the manufacturing resources planning system. Manufacturing and engineering resource planning starts with Business Planning, then Sales and Operation Planning, then Master Scheduling, then Detailed Task & Resource Planning and Detailed Material & Capacity Planning.

          Demand Management and Rough Cut Capacity Planning are hooked up to Sales & Operation Planning and Master Scheduling. Engineering Scheduling is hooked up to Detailed Task & Resource Planning. Plant & Supplier Scheduling is hooked up to Detailed Material & Capacity Planning. Engineering Scheduling and Plant & Supplier scheduling are interconnected to support the execution of Business Planning.

          Integration of the scheduling processes requires integration of the data structure. Data base must reflect dependent relationships between manufactured and purchased hardware, engineering deliverables, manufacturing activities, and engineering activities. Manufactured part, engineering event, manufacturing routing and engineering template should be distinctly shown in the data structure. ERP utilizes a bill of events and/or a process template approach to integrate all disciplines involved in the product life cycle and to develop dependent demands for engineering activities.

          A bill of events is the foundation for dependent demand planning. It defines the relationship between deliverable items. Part numbers are assigned to the events. The template defines the planned sequence of execution for each step, provides estimated time for execution of each step, identifies the resources required, defines the work center where each step will be performed, and defines the relationships to other activities for each step. The key issue in the implementation of ERP is the definition of the interface between ERP and MRP. ERP plays a key role in achieving the company's business objectives because it integrates the planning and scheduling of all activities.

SUMMARY
          The need to integrate the engineering and manufacturing scheduling processes is obvious. The objectives are to create valid resource plans and schedules that are integrated with all other business functions, plans and schedules; and build fundamental control of the engineering and development processes.