Key Reasons to use Epicor Kinetic MRP
Yesterday, we hosted a webinar on the features and functionality within the Epicor Kinetic MRP. Given the number of questions we had at the end, it became clear that the MRP is underused and quite confusing for most. If your company builds to stock or is a mixed-mode manufacturer, you should be using MRP.
Materials Requirements Planning (MRP) is a set of planning tools that help a business estimate potential demand and supply. An MRP will estimate potential demand and suggest supply to meet that demand, taking the guesswork out of the equation. The system can auto-generate jobs, purchase orders, and transfer orders.
Your business should implement precise methods of manufacturing tailored to your part records, maintain robust Engineering Change Order (ECO) control, ensure accurate inventory records, establish comprehensive Lead Time values for purchased and transferred materials, and validate capability estimates for resources and resource groups. The MRP uses all that information to calculate the job, transfer order, and purchase suggestions. It also uses the source of the demand to determine what part quantities are needed to be produced or purchased.
MRP is crucial to a business for several reasons including:
Material Requirements Planning (MRP) is crucial for several reasons:
- Demand Estimation and Supply Proposal: MRP helps estimate potential demand and propose the supply needed to meet this demand. It generates job orders, purchase orders, and transfer order suggestions, ensuring that manufacturing and purchasing activities align with suggested demand.
- Efficiency in Production and Purchasing: By using MRP, companies can anticipate future demand for products and materials, ensuring that they are available at the right place and time. This allows a business to maintain efficient production schedules and avoid material shortages causing delays.
- Handling Different Manufacturing Modes: MRP is designed for companies that manufacture make-to-stock quantities or operate in mixed-mode manufacturing environments, properly managing both custom and stock products.
- Accurate Planning and Scheduling: MRP processes sales orders, forecasts, and master production schedules to generate manufacturing and purchasing suggestions. This leads to accurate planning and scheduling.
- Inventory Management: MRP helps in managing inventory by tracking parts and their revisions, ensuring that the right quantities are available for production. It also considers planning parameters like minimum, maximum, and safety stock values to avoid overstocking or product shortages.
- Improved Efficiency: The MRP process can run on a schedule, eliminating the need for a full regeneration every time MRP is processed, maximizing the MRP functionalities effectiveness.
- Integration with Other Systems: MRP can integrate with other systems like CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) to ensure that manufacturing methods are aligned with the configurations selected at the order level.
Overall, MRP is essential for ensuring that manufacturing and purchasing activities are well-coordinated, efficient, and aligned with the company’s demand forecasts and production schedules. Please spend the hour and watch our on-demand webinar of the features and functionalities within the Epicor Kinetic MRP. Click here to watch now.
I would also advise your business to call the Epicor team at 2W Tech and let our team of experts help your business maximize the potential the MRP system can bring to your business.
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