Functions of the MRP system
What are the functions of the MRP system? What are its objectives, basic functions and problems?
MRP PRODUCTION PLANNING
The basic functions of an MRP system include: • stock control, • management of material lists and • supply chain. Therefore, MRP helps companies maintain inventory levels and to plan manufacturing, purchasing and delivery activities. In addition, companies need to control the amount of material they buy, plan what products are to be produced and in what quantities and ensure that they are able to meet current and future customer demand, and all this at the lowest cost possible. Making a bad decision in any of these areas will cause the company to lose money, such as: • If insufficient quantities of a material (or the wrong material) are purchased, the company may be unable to meet the deadlines. • If excessive quantities of a material are bought, the money stays in the warehouse. As long as this stock is kept in the warehouse, that money cannot be used. • If the manufacturing process is started at the wrong time, it may cause delivery deadlines to be missed. The MRP solves these problems by offering answers to the following questions: • What materials are needed? • How many are necessary? • What products must be delivered? • When are they needed? Material requirements planning can be applied both to items purchased from external suppliers and to sub-components manufactured internally, as components of more complex items. The answer to all of these questions can be found in only one option – fulfillment
PROBLEMS WITH MRP SYSTEMS
If there are errors in the inventory data, in the bill of materials (BOM) or in the production plan, the output data will also be incorrect. The integrity of the data is also affected by inaccurate stock adjustments, errors in receiving of incoming and outgoing products, errors in stocktaking, etc. All these types of errors can be avoided by implementing a global ERP system to manage all this data, flows and processes, to organize inventory and shop floors, and intercommunicate needs, so that each warehouse can redistribute the components to serve the entire company. To this end, ERPAG ( https://www.erpag.com/ ) has made notable efforts to provide an MRP as efficient and integrated with the nature of the company, i.e. oriented to the activity of the company with special focus on the productive activity.