One of the classical issues when running MRP is that it creates too many lines, too many suggestions that I don’t understand or that I don’t like.
And I would like to give you some example of that and how we can solve that using a simple MRP in reverse planning.
So first of all, if we go into the standard planning worksheet to try to run a plan and see what it suggests in here, calculate a plan and I have a filter on my location production, which is my main location, to see what is going on in here.
And except for running this plan, I have installed my reverse planning app and I have installed my graphical inventory profile app, which is free on AppSource, so I can see the inventory profile per item to explain what is going on here.
So one of the issues running MRP planning in the planning worksheet is like this example you have three lines per item or up here you have a reschedule and a change quantity per item so it creates in this case maybe few lines but in some cases I think on my item 1450 here four different lines and it’s difficult to overview what is going on let’s take a look at three examples in here first of all, my item number 1000, that’s my full bike, my city bike, this one.
It pops up in here.
If I view the graphical profile in here, I have the graphical inventory profile somewhere in here like this.
On my item 1000, on the location filter production, I view the graphical profile.
And I can see here why it shows up in my journal, because it’s actually going to minus 20 on March 25, which of course is an issue.
But in real life, it ends up with a positive inventory of seven.
So maybe I just need to move some dates and have the tool in reverse planning.
We have the tool to move date instead of actually trying to do something on my supply orders here.
So it’s not that critical in real life.
Let’s take another item in here.
my item number 1300, which is my chain in here, my chain I see in here.
Let’s look at the profile here.
It makes three lines to reschedule and change quantity.
It makes a new line and makes a cancellation.
And again, if I look at my graphical profile for this one in the standard MRP, looking at the graphical profile, it actually has a very nice inventory profile.
The only reason it pops up is because it’s running safety stock and reordering policy lot for lot.
So if the demands are changing, it will also move around the suggestions in here and the inventory goes to zero, which is not critical to me, but of course it’s below safety stock.
But it’s not very critical that I need to supply.
And the last item I would like to show you Here is my item number 1500, which is only one line and a suggestion of a new item in here.
And it’s a lamp and it’s just 34 pieces.
And it’s my lamp over here, my bike lamp.
So these are the third item that I want to show you.
If I look at the graphical profile for this one in the same period, I can see again, just like the bike, that it has some negative inventory over here, which of course is an issue, but it has a positive end inventory here.
And the reason it doesn’t move the supply over here is because if I open this document in here from the graphical profile, I can see that I use my planning flexibility none to avoid moving this around.
So even though the standard planning flexibility is very cool.
It might make some noise for me in the fact that in my planning worksheet, when I come back here, I only see that I need 34.
So in this case, I will order another 34, which of course is an issue for me.
So when I run through all of those lines, very few of them is actually very critical.
If I take my item 1012, look at the profile, and of course, I know my inventory here.
That’s another bike, and it actually goes to minus 10 so this is really critical i need to do something i need to start a production order the same if i’m looking at my item 1026 it’s also very critical it goes below the safety stock below zero to minus 23 but those are the actual two item the only two item that needs to be done something with right now when we’re not calculating a safety stock and so on let Let’s see how all of this look in Simple MRP.
And the whole idea is I want to avoid this menu line.
So in the Simple MRP, we only create new lines.
We only suggest new orders.
We don’t move dates.
We don’t cancel orders.
We only look at supplies and try to handle new supplies.
So I’m entering my Simple MRP journal.
And I have an introduction video.
Once you saw this in this one, you can postpone it or you can avoid it to be shown up again.
In here, if I calculate simple MRP, and to begin with, I might want to use a template here where I’m looking at safety stock.
So I want to look at item that goes below safety stock, and I’m not triggering on end inventory.
I’ll show you what that means.
So right now, I’m just planning for safety stock on my location code production.
So it looks a little like the MRP planning, except I have lots of different parameters I can set.
So again here, it creates many lines, but only one line of each item, not many lines, and only suggestions new.
So only stuff that we need to replenish.
If I look at my inventory right now and my expected end inventory and lowest inventory in the period, many of them is actually zero on the end inventory and the existing inventory and the lowest inventory.
But the reason they pop up is if we have a safety stock attached to it.
And of course, it triggers by the safety stock.
So if I scroll a little further right, I can see my safety stock somewhere out here in a column.
So that’s not very critical.
Let’s try to run it again.
I will just delete them all.
And by the way, it’s much faster than the standard MRP.
I will calculate again.
This time, I will calculate according to safety stock again.
But now, sorry, I will calculate according to zero.
So I only want the item to show up if it gets below zero.
And I will remove my end inventory trigger for the example here.
So all the items that gets below zero in the period, not below safety stock, but below zero.
Now we’re down to four items.
That’s much better.
Four different items here.
below safety stock, but below zero.
Now we’re down to four items, that much better.
Four different items here, among those my item 1500 that was locked, my item 1000 that was below zero, but not my chain for example here that we had before.
But if I look at my end inventory, we remember maybe from item 1000 and item 1500, they actually have a positive end inventory.
If you look again, just to make sure here, the graphical inventory profile on item 1000, it had a positive end inventory.
So maybe it’s not that critical.
I only want to look at the items where I need to start new orders.
So let’s try to delete those four lines.
Oops, sorry.
Delete the four lines and then run it again just to show the difference.
And now I will calculate according to zero and I will trigger on end inventory.
So I use the template where I actually trigger on end inventory, meaning only show me if the end inventory in the period is below zero.
That’s the interesting stuff.
All the other issues is just a matter of moving dates.
If I’m doing that, I will expect only two items to show up.
And that was the two critical items.
One of them being the, one of my bikes and the other bike that we saw just before that goes below zero and actually need to start two production orders.
So instead of having a lot of lines in the planning worksheet, I can have a very simple MRP planning gathering quickly the items that actually go below zero and then later on below safety stock if I want to and below reorder point and so on.
So I can expand my calculation further on.
So that’s an easy way of doing it.
And actually, I only needed to start those two items and not the three item here that the MRP planning showed up as interesting.
Of course those were also in the MRP planning worksheet.