Material Requirements Planning - a brief note

Material Requirements Planning (MRP) is a planning and scheduling technique for manufacturing. It is sometimes called "little MRP" to distinguish it from Manufacturing Resource Planning. It uses:

1. bills of materials,
2. inventory data,
3. the master production schedule.

To function of MRP can be understood when it is viewed from its encompassing framework of Manufacturint Planning and Control (MPC) System, which is depicted roughly as follows (Vollmann, Berry, and Whybark, 1992):

An MPC system provides information to efficiently manage material flows, people and equipment utilization, as well as coordinate internal/ external activities to meet market requirements. MPC systems can be classified into a number of approaches, e.g. flow, repetitive, just-in-time, MRP, and project approaches (Vollmann, Berry and Whybark, 1992).



Other important MRP terms are:

Available to promise
Backlog
Capacity
Capacity Requirements Planning
Lot size
Operations sequencing
Order release
Planned order receipt
Rough cut capacity planning
Shop floor control
Where used list
Work centers

References

1. Capacity planning: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_planning
2. Lunn, T., and Neff, S.A. (1992) MRP: integrating material requirements planning and modern business, Business One Irwin.
3. Vollmann, T.E., Berry, W.L. and Whybark, D.C. (1992) Manufacturing Planning and Control Systems, Irwin.