Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP II)
MRP II (Manufacturing Resource Planning) is an established technique for making materials and other production resources available in harmony with your production plan. It is the 'backstop' function to other just-in-time techniques (such as Kanban) and ensures that your inventory is balanced with demand. The MRP II routine draws information from many other areas of your system, to make suggestions about purchase and works orders that need to be placed, and orders that should be cancelled or re-scheduled. It can be run as often as you wish, and is frequently run as a daily routine.
The information provided by MRP II helps to strengthen the team-working between your sales, production and purchasing functions. Panic buying and overstocking can become a thing of the past, leading to predictable prices and smoother production. The system calculates requirements for finished goods, sub-assemblies and raw materials, and links back to your purchase order schedule. It increases resource visibility to the rest of the business and delivers a superb range of practical features, including:
- Applicable to standard and 'one off' products
- Takes account of lead times and shrinkage factors
- Allocated stock can be included or excluded
- Routine can be warehouse specific
- Full pegging of demand to origin
- User definable output
- Control Desk, for rapid creations of suggested purchase and works orders
- Explanation of all order suggestions
- Feedback into capacity planning
- Multiple production plans for 'what if' exercises
- Option to run automatically, at set times, with parameters passed to it
- Links with forecasting, for maintenance in a spreadsheet-style environment
- Use of safety stock, minimum order quantities and increments
