Run MRP Screen

This screen allows you to specify the options for running Material Resources Planning (MRP) to plan your purchasing and production runs. When business circumstances change, you can run MRP again to update your plans and supersede any earlier results which may no longer be valid. MRP is highly automated and comprehensive, making it a powerful tool for excellent fulfillment results.

Open this screen as follows:

*  From Main Navigation screen Click: Purchasing Icon
*  Click: Planning Tab > [Run MRP] button.
*  Fill in the Required and Optional parameters as follows:

• Facility: Specify the warehouse or facility for this MRP run. (Required)
  • A Facility and optionally a MRP Store Group is required to run MRP.
• MRP Store Group: Optionally, specify a MRP Store Group for this MRP run.
  • Otherwise, the system runs MRP for all the stores.
  • If you specify a MRP Store Group, then MRP will only create requirements only for products which have orders in the store group. Caution: It will not create requirements for products which may be below minimum stock for your warehouse but have no outstanding orders in the store (group).
• Product ID: This field can be used to specify a single product for this MRP run. Caution: If you run MRP for only a single product, it will not consider the parts in it's Bill Of Material if it has one. This is recommended only for testing purposes when you have a very large number of products.
• Use with Caution: Supplier: Use this field to run MRP for only products which can be purchased from a specified supplier as of today.
  • If a product can be purchased from multiple suppliers, then it will show up on the MRP run for each of its suppliers, producing duplicate requirements if you run all suppliers individually. Caution is advised regarding duplicate requirements.
  • If a manufactured product with a Bill Of Material could also be purchased from a supplier, and its parts can also be purchased from the same supplier, then MRP will be run for both the purchased product and the manufactured product's parts.
  • Finally, running MRP for a supplier would only clear the results of previous MRP runs for that supplier and not for any other suppliers. So, you can run MRP for each of your suppliers sequentially, and then go to the Open Requirements Screen and see the requirements generated for all the suppliers together, but watch out for duplicate requirements as discussed above.
• Default Years in Future for Sales Orders: Specify how many years in the future to assume sales orders should be fulfilled if there is no ship date set on the order. The system will determine when a sales order will ship based on the following criteria if provided in the Order:

      # Ship Group's ship by date
      # Ship Group's ship before date
      # Item's ship before date
      # Item's ship after date
      # Item's estimated delivery date

If none of those fields are set, it will add the "default years" to the current run date/time to determine when items should ship. By default, this is set to 1 year in the future.

• Inventory Receipt Time Buffer: Specify how far back in time the item receipt dates for purchase orders, approved purchase requirements, or production runs should be shifted versus their stated delivery or production dates for this MRP run. This flag provides a buffer between one hour and one month to simulate "common sense" in solve the following problem:
  • If inventory is scheduled to arrive at 12 PM but is required at 11:59 AM, the system would think that the shipment due to arrive at 12 PM would not arrive in time and create a new order for inventory at 11:59 AM. In reality, this would not make sense. The buffer avoids a nonsensical answer. The default is 1 day.
• Percentage of Sales Forecast to Use: Specifies what percentage of the value in your sales forecasts (stored in the SalesForecastItem database entity) should be used to project inventory. "50" in this case means that 50% of the forecast sales will be used for MRP. (New to version 1.4)
• Create Transfer Requirements?:
  • = Yes, Specifies that inventory transfer requirements will be created when inventory is available in a backup warehouse, which must be reviewed and approved, or
  • = No, Specifies that inventory transfer requests will be created directly and ready to execute. (New to version 1.4.) For a discussion of this option see Material Resources Planning topic "Transfering Inventory".
• Create Pending Internal Requirements?:
  • =Yes, Specifies that Required Production Runs will be held for possible consolidation before they are converted to Production Runs, or
  • =No, Specifies that Requirements for Production Runs will be converted directly into Production Runs upon Approval. See Requirements. (New to version 1.4)

Note that Facility is required for MRP to run.

*  Click: [Run MRP] to run the MRP process you have specified. 

When it is finished, you will be taken to the View MRP Screen. This screen shows all of the MRP events on the time line for this run in chronological order including:

• Sales Orders
• Purchase Orders
• Production Runs
• Inventory Transfers
• Sales Forecasts (percentage specified)
• Proposed Purchase Orders
• Proposed Manufacturing Runs

Note that this is not the Requirements screen on which you can take actions, but rather a review screen for information about the MRP time line analysis. To continue by taking action on Requirements, proceed as follows:

*  Go to Purchasing > Planning Tab > [Open Requirements] to Approve, Edit, or Remove
   specific Requirements to make them ready for implementation. 
*  Go to Purchasing > Planning Tab > [Approved . . . Requirements] to take action 
   on MRP results which are now the Approved Requirements of various types.

Related Tests

• MRP Tests which are found in the Testing Manual in the Wiki Navigation box.

Step By Step: Running MRP << Manual pages >> Step By Step: Using the Inventory Requirements

Planning Tab and MRP << Tab pages >> Suppliers Tab

Procurement Processes << Section pages >> Inventory Processes