CompuServe Thread

AL, Right up my alley! MRP stands for Material Requirements Planning. It is a system that determines when and how much material your nedd to buy/make based on your product demand, your current inventory levels, and your WIP (Work In Process). Most computerized MRP systems consist of modules: 1. Master Parts Catalog – A database of all the parts you use and coding that tells the system whether it is a make or a buy part, how long it takes to make or buy, and, depending on sophistication, lot sizing, order policies, min-max, reorder point, etc. 2. Bill of Materials – A database of the part/assembly relationship. What parts go into what assembly and how many it takes. 3. Inventory – A database of your materials in stock. 4. Master Schedule – A database that has your final product (aka: End Item) schedule (ie: When and how many of your product you want completed.)- These are called Requirements. 5. Planning – Looks at your master schedule and assigns an order for each requirement based on data in the Master Parts Catalog (for lot sizing etc.) Determines a start date for each order (replenishment) by counting backwards from the Master Schedule date the leadtime in the Master Parts Catalog. Hence the term — Backwards Scheduling. Then it looks at Bill of Materials and finds out what you need to make this assembly, makes their completion date the same as the assembly's start date. It looks at your inventory balance and subtracts it out of the orders' quantities it is about to make and looks at any existing orders to subtract them out, too. As it goes through this process, called Netting, if it is on a buy item it stops netting down that chain. For make items, it loops again, finding the parts that make up this sub-assembly and nets them. It continues until it has reached the lowest level,which will be all buy parts. What I have given you is about $1000 worth of Arthur-Anderson [ MORE ]

[ continuation ] consulting. 8) However, it's yours for free. If you wish I can email you much more info, or email me with your address and I'll mail you info. My profession, which I'll be leaving in a few weeks <BIG GRIN>, is Planning and Control Systems for Loral Aerospace- a Defense Contractor. I'm giving up the exciting world of Planning for Video Production/Editing. Gosh, I'll even get to use a Toaster! – via Whap!

It might help to provide the general category of manufacturing that we are talking about here (industrial/textiles/electrical/…). Many times the same acronym means different things.

Al, I see you just got the MRP defined for you, so here's my two bits. American Society of Quality Control is the one I'm familiar with, though there are several organs with the same acronym. Be that as it may, they all deal with Quality Control, both under manufacturing methods and testing/design/engineering regimes. ("The Quality is built in before we let the guy with the hangover screw it up." 8) Seeing it linked with MRP probably means determining if vendor parts are up to snuff before acceptance and seeing they're handled/dispatched properly once on site. I never was certified through ASQC though I did have to satisy the Air Force that I knew how to make checkmarks 8). I did put some time in QC areas for manufacturing routing and discrepancy testing (meaning- making sure things got done in the proper order and they got checked when necessary 8) Doug

Al – Since the MRP question has been ably answered, I'll answer the other… ASQC stands for American Society of/for Quality Control. Obviously, if one is certified by them …