February 05, 2018
By, Jennifer LaLonde, Application Consultant at Guide Technologies
It is important to understand a simple thing about MRP, it is about having the right materials at the right time to manufacturing what is required of the business. In order to make the best use of MRP there are certain factors that need to be considered. The top three in my opinion would have to be the following:
1) Inventory stock level accuracy is important so that you can be sure what you see on a screen is what you will find in the stockroom, and use in building your product.
2) The bills of material that are used for building your product must also be accurate both in the items that are on the BOM and the quantities that are called out. This will ensure that the correct material is purchased and used to build the product.
3) Lead times for purchased material and manufacturing need to be accurate as well so that material is planned to be available at the appropriate times. While those are not necessarily tips or tricks, they are necessary for a healthy MRP run.
Assuming that you can rely on accurate lead times, BOMs, and inventory on hand, then you can rely on your MRP output to help simplify work and run MRP more effectively. Because MRP can sometimes be confusing here are some tips that can be considered helpful.
1) No one ever thinks about reading the manual. That is the simplest trick that I can offer. The manual is often overlooked, but it provides definitions of functionality, and even examples of what some of the options are and how they will affect you. Please, do not try to read and understand the manual in one sitting, it will bore you to death and you will probably glaze over it, but if you have a question, try searching the manual. You can search for key words in the manual and there is often helpful information there.
2) There are many different codes related to MRP (order policy codes, plan customer order codes, the way planning run options are selected, etc) that affect how it runs and groups requirements and recommendations. Don’t be afraid to experiment and try new things to see what it does.
3) Use views and subsets to simplify what you actually look at with MRP. The views determine the column of selected attributes that you view on the screen, and the subset will provide the rows of selected data. This way you put the data in a more simple way that you want to see it in and make it most effective for you.
4) You can also modify your cards and card files in MRP to further provide you with the details as you want to see them. Cards can be customized to display the detailed information you want to see. It can be as detailed as you want it to be.
MRP can be a very helpful tool that helps simplify work for the users. It’s important to take the time to understand the codes and how they affect the system.