Material Requirement Planning

Manufacturing planning and inventory control aimed at efficient management of product manufacturing. MRP-systems enable to simultaneously achieve the following goals:

Check that materials or products are available for manufacturing or supplying to the customers

Manage the lowest possible level of inventory

Plan manufacturing processes, supplies and procurement

At the input of such systems there are a Master Production Schedule (MPS), inventory data (information on availability of raw materials and semi-finished products), a Bill of Materials (BOM) and information on planning (routing, labor and machine tool standards). At the output– a recommended production plan (detailed information about the starting time and the end time of each operation in terms of the product components) and a recommended procurement plan for the raw materials and semi-finished products. MRP technology was developed at the end of 1960s and has been further extended to a more general technology of Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP II) and the concept of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP).