Any manufacturing activity is riddled with a lot of constraints, and even though the so-called "best enterprise" software companies in the world cannot solve them in their entirety, manufacturers can look for best-of-breed solutions to mitigate problems. Some common problems in manufacturing include long and erratic production lead times, irregular patterns of ordering, high setup and change over times, process bottlenecks, and excess inventory along the process route.
Master requirement planning (MRP) is important as it calculates the exact amounts of raw, sourced, and WIP materials to make exact amounts of finished products as per orders received. This will ensure that the manufacturer sources only required quantities of materials required, that he will be making only the required quantities of WIP and finished products, and that no inventories are created unnecessarily.
Master Production scheduling (MPS) is important because it calculates the time required to make finished products as per orders from raw, sourced, and WIP materials and so the delivery dates are determined from the lead times in processing materials on different work centers. In today's manufacturing both accurate delivery dates and optimizing resources are equally important. For this, good software which has excellent MRP and MPS capabilities is a must.
When fulfilling your orders, you cannot assume infinites. That is, you cannot assume you have infinite manufacturing capacity available, infinite access to quantities of raw material, and that infinite quantities of work in progress (WIP) materials can be produced by your manufacturing units. You always have fixed suppliers who supply fixed quantities of raw materials. Suppliers may be able to stretch a bit to give you more raw materials for your requirements, but there is a limit. Similarly, you have a maximum capacity to produce finished and WIP materials. Then all along your manufacturing line, there are certain constraints which prevent you to have more flexibility in your product mix beyond a certain point. With all this in consideration, you need to plan for the finite quantities of WIP that impact your production process.
Unfortunately, due to the complex requirements for making manufacturing planning and scheduling software, some vendors take the easy route of planning for quantities of materials by assuming infinite production capacity. This has resulted in proliferation of software products which do not meet production requirements.
Fortunately though, there are some vendors who have labored hard to come up with really exciting software which take care of many of these problems. You just need to know what to look for to find these software solutions.
Master requirement planning (MRP) is important as it calculates the exact amounts of raw, sourced, and WIP materials to make exact amounts of finished products as per orders received. This will ensure that the manufacturer sources only required quantities of materials required, that he will be making only the required quantities of WIP and finished products, and that no inventories are created unnecessarily.
Master Production scheduling (MPS) is important because it calculates the time required to make finished products as per orders from raw, sourced, and WIP materials and so the delivery dates are determined from the lead times in processing materials on different work centers. In today's manufacturing both accurate delivery dates and optimizing resources are equally important. For this, good software which has excellent MRP and MPS capabilities is a must.
When fulfilling your orders, you cannot assume infinites. That is, you cannot assume you have infinite manufacturing capacity available, infinite access to quantities of raw material, and that infinite quantities of work in progress (WIP) materials can be produced by your manufacturing units. You always have fixed suppliers who supply fixed quantities of raw materials. Suppliers may be able to stretch a bit to give you more raw materials for your requirements, but there is a limit. Similarly, you have a maximum capacity to produce finished and WIP materials. Then all along your manufacturing line, there are certain constraints which prevent you to have more flexibility in your product mix beyond a certain point. With all this in consideration, you need to plan for the finite quantities of WIP that impact your production process.
Unfortunately, due to the complex requirements for making manufacturing planning and scheduling software, some vendors take the easy route of planning for quantities of materials by assuming infinite production capacity. This has resulted in proliferation of software products which do not meet production requirements.
Fortunately though, there are some vendors who have labored hard to come up with really exciting software which take care of many of these problems. You just need to know what to look for to find these software solutions.
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