9 Lives And Counting

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REPLENISHMENT & SCHEDULING

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In its latest version, MRP is one of several tools used for capacity and materials planning.

AROUND FOR DECADES, THE trusty material requirements planning (MRP) system continues to be used in one form

or another by many manufacturers. Sure, at most medium-size and larger companies, MRP has been overshadowed by its fancier, multi-application big brother, enterprise resource planning (ERP), a client-server-based system. But it still plays an important role.

Statistics from IWs BEST PLANTS finalists demonstrate MRP's continued relevance to manufacturing. Among Best Plants finalists in 2004 and 2005,80% had implemented MRP, and another 8% had plans to implement it.

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In the days when manufacturers generally did large-volume production runs because equipment changeovers were time consuming and expensive, MRP was hard to beat. Using a sales forecast, it could be used to handle the bill of materials and routing, the purchase orders needed, and the shop orders to build products-all with an emphasis on inventory accuracy. A later version, manufacturing resource planning, called MRP II, added accounting and other business processes.