A quick read, well written, nicely illustrated with charts, spreadsheets and case studies. Presents a relatively high level perspective of a manufacturer's business processes from pre-sales through planning, production & delivery, to post-sales customer service. Compares the challenges of operations in an unintegrated systems environment with one in which systems are well integrated within an ERP suite and does it in a way that makes it easy to understand and remember the benefits of the latter. Geared toward students in an academic environment, it is useful to those already in business who can benefit from its conceptual clarity. Unlike most of the dated ERP books on the market, it covers current topics like XML & web services.