Embedded Files
Photo by Cheong Kwee Thiam
9.0 Material Requirement Planning (MRP)
Material requirements planning (MRP) is a system for calculating the materials and components needed to manufacture a product.
According to Rouse (2018), MRP consists of three primary steps:
taking inventory of the materials and components on hand,
identifying which additional ones are needed, and
scheduling their production or purchase.
Watch the YouTube video below for MRP:
In short, a product manufacturer will not want to experience part shortages that may potentially halt production flow. For example, if there is shortage of tyre, a bicycle manufacturer is not able to complete bicycle manufacturing. Imagine the potential implication in business if such unfortunate event occurs. Therefore, the bicycle manufacturer's requirement of tyre needs to be carefully planned, i.e. information pertains to source, inthis case, tyres; so that he does not overstock or understock tyres. Reconcile this with the previous topic on EOQ.
There are three main sources of information for MRP:
Master schedule: giving the number of every product to be made in every period
Bill of materials (BOM): listing the materials needed for every product
Inventory records: showing the materials available.
MRP evolution
The success of MRP, evolved into as Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP II) with additional Capacity Requirement Planning (CRP) that was not present in MRP (SmartSheet, 2019). It is not only limited to the manufacturing industry, but for others which wanted to use it too.
See Figure 9A below on how MRP schematically works:
Page updated
Report abuse