MRP is not a panacea
I was reading a blog post by Bill Waddell from The Lean Executive (http://leanexecutive.com/blog/?p=24) The thrust of the article is that MRP is not a panacea for manufacturers and I agree wholeheartedly. For those unfamiliar with this acronym MRP stands for material requirements planning or manufacturing resource planning.
MRP software is still a very useful tool for capacity planning but to rely totally on MRP to drive the factory process can be problematic. MRP hit the scene around 1961 and one of it’s drawbacks is that it can be saddled on top of an inefficient process, seemingly give all the right answers, but then lead to the ruin of the company. There are plenty of disaster stories over the last 10 years to back this up.
Bill Waddell went on to say “MRP was useful - even necessary - under the manufacturing philosophy of the day. Trying to become lean using a 45 year old manufacturing tool won’t work, however. It is a lot like a world class, Olympic sprinter who breaks her leg. Sure, she is going to need crutches until her leg heals. But she better get rid of the crutches eventually if she thinks she is going to get to the Olympics. MRP was a great crutch for factories bloated with inventory, cranking out dismal quality products in the 1960’s. Nobody is going to keep up with Toyota using MRP, however.”
So what is the answer. A combination of Lean in tandem with more flexible software is the ideal approach. As an example, Accentis Enterprise has basic MRP features but you have total control over how the materials and capacity planning data should be utilised to support a manufacturing process.
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