Patent ID: 7610112

Claim:
A computer program product stored in a computer usable medium including computer usable program code when executed by a computer for processing orders, said computer program product comprising: computer usable program code for receiving a request for delivery of an order by a requested delivery date; computer usable program code, responsive to receiving the request for delivery of the order by the requested delivery date, for specifying a date when an engineering change becomes effective for at least one material required for the order outside of a material requirements planning system, wherein the specified date when the engineering change becomes effective for the at least one material is the date when a manufacturing operation changes from the at least one material to a different version of the at least one material based on factors not accounted for by a current date when the engineering change becomes effective for the at least one material, and wherein the specified date when the engineering change becomes effective for the at least one material is specified manually or programmatically for overriding the current date; computer usable program code for creating an alternate bill of materials based on the specified date when the engineering change becomes effective; computer usable program code for creating an alternate manufacturing plan based on an alternate bill of materials for delivery of the order by the requested delivery date; and computer usable program code for initiating the manufacturing operation based on the alternate manufacturing plan.