Material Requirement Planning

Franklin Fan has a company in which he basically deals in home remodeling and personal comfort. Among the products he sells, are the ceiling fan and the personal fan that have proved to have a consistent increase in demand among his regular customers. For Franklin to stay competitive in the particular industry, he has an operation and supply chain manager and a vice president Kathryn Marley. Marley’s understanding of progression in business has made her propose for a Material Requirement Planning (MRP) system that is aimed at improving and making Franklin’s business secure. In respect to her aggressiveness, Marley’s hunger for further advancement in the performance of the company’s processes forces her to meet and consult the company’s materials manager, the productions manager, and the purchasing manager to make their observations to aid in making the MRP system better.

Discussion

The research pointed out that there was always an outburst of material requirement planning each week that almost changed the company’s planning. The above was of the essence in identification of any new orders that the company needed to launch for its customers. Besides, it aided in the singling out of the receipts that were already scheduled and had experienced delays which in turn could facilitate the rescheduling in some later date to create room for the flow of other jobs. The analysis indicated that the section in the MRP that entailed rescheduling and the update of the delayed receipts played a significant role in the getting of orders the right moment they are needed. Additionally, when using the inventory transactions order releases are transformed to receipts that have already been scheduled once more. Due to the system’s efficiency, no capacity problems are experienced in the planning processes.

A study of the system by the purchasing manager demonstrated that customers wasted a lot of time in following up orders that were late thereby having little time of making decisive purchases as a result of the failure of the MRP system. The system at times showed irrelevant orders for purchases instead of the planned lead times as required. This made working difficult on the part of some staff members. Secondly, the distribution of the workload throughout say a month is quite unpredictable and also unfair in relation to the system. At certain times of the week, it has been forecasted to have a lot of work that is generated by the overproduction of the scheduled receipts. It is usually done with the motive of just keeping the staff busy instead of doing the real work as mandated. It also went a notch higher by the employees working extra time to accomplish the target of the company. The override in the receipt scheduling information makes it uncertain for the MRP record planners to come up with a reliable system.

Recommendations

I think, for the efficient and effective running of the MRP system, the receipt schedule planners should take a keen interest in the studying of the flow of the orders so that a proper scheduling of the receipts is enhanced. It will in turn clearly portray an organized distribution of the workload among the employees to reduce the effects of overtime. I believe that a lead time that is well planned will greatly reduce the time killed by the customers in following updates that are less important. In my opinion the MRP system can be improved further by collecting and recording all relevant information accurately into the system to avoid the bottlenecks in the workstation.

References

Krajewski, L., Malhotra, M., & Ritzman, L. (2013). Operations management: processes and supply chains (10th ed., p. 582).