MRP vs Critical Material - what do other manufacturers find most useful?

  • 9 June 2021
  • 8 replies
  • 619 views

Userlevel 3
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We are a manufacturing facility and are looking for input from other manufacturers on what you find works best for you, as far as being able to tell what materials we need to fulfill orders, whether it be PO’s to order Raw Material or Work Orders to build inventory in-house.

We have tried Critical Materials and MRP. Critical Materials doesn’t seem to look at the whole picture, when we enter a WO #, the system seems to only see if you have enough materials to build that one WO.  When we look at MRP, we see a whole other story of what items need to be ordered or built.

Keep in mind, we also need to be able to link Parent Item WO’s with Children Item WO’s.

I look forward to seeing what my fellow community members have to say about this.


8 replies

Userlevel 2
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Wondering if you use the Materials Requirements by Item Inquiry on the MRP workspace?  The limitation of this inquiry is that you have to look item by item.

 

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@TShoaff we are not using the Material Requirements by Item Inquiry on the MRP workspace.

We are using MRP because it givesus a better picture of our demand, compared to Critical Materials.

 

Userlevel 5
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As you mentioned, the biggest difference will be whether you are looking at the specific work order, or the purchasing as whole. This case is really useful when you have a particular item you are worried about, and you want to make sure that you can accomplish building this.  In my experience, this should be the exception, and MRP should be the rule. 

MRP is a different animal, but if you take a look, you will notice that these critical materials show on the MRP report.  There is a lot that goes into these MRP calculations, including min qty, max qty, lot qtys, forecasts, etc. MRP should be utilized when you are looking forward, and are ahead of the game. This is always a challenge in a manufacturing environment, but MRP will help you get a better view based upon the required dates.

As of right now, if you use the Material Requirements by Item Inquiry, it will give you what you are looking for, but it its a bit clunky in my opinion. I have seen a few people that will utilize the MRP display, and then will export to excel, and create a sum by item to get a consolidated total for purchasing. 

It would be nice if you could get a consolidated list directly out of Acumatica.

Userlevel 5
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Hi, most of our customers use MRP and I never see them use Critical Material for daily planning. MRP tries to balance quantity between demand such as SO, production order, forecast, etc vs supply from purchase order, production order, on hand, other warehouse. It gives you big pictures. Through Exception, it helps you to evaluate your supply side (before making another supply via MRP Display) whether purchase order and production orders are late, not required, needs to be expedited, etc.

However when you generate child production order via MRP, there is no link established because MRP. At this stage, MRP seems to be designed to only look at quantity for planning (demand vs supply) not establishing link between parent and children. I assume when you need link you plan to allocate the finished item in the children order to its parent, cannot be used in other order. Also it looks like it’s a make to order type of item, not standard item you can simply take from stock. If this is the case you can mark the child items as marked for production and generate production order for them from parent order not via MRP.

Though I still would like Acumatica establish link when order is generated from MRP. 

Userlevel 2
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Most of our clients will use MRP since it aggregates demand and takes lead times into consideration when planning replenishment.

The value of the critical materials inquiry in a make to order or make to stock environment is tracking those items that have short lead times and also to verify any replenishments that may have been planned via MRP have been received so as not to delay production.  

In a job shop environment, the critical material inquiry allows purchasing or manufacturing of components to be tied to the specific production order.

Hi Sarah, 

 

We are a manufacturing facility as well and we use both. We use MRP for planning purposes at large/purchasing and Critical Materials daily or monthly when creating our production schedule. 

MRP is great when it comes to purchasing as well as manufacturing. It will take into account any components on the BOM as well as subassemblies. I know you mentioned you want to link the parent and child inventory ID’s and work orders. You can activate the “Parent ID” column in MRP display to show you which Finished Good is associated with the subassembly or component part MRP is flagging you to produce.

When using Critical Materials, I know you mentioned it is a pain because it only looks at the materials needed for that one work order. We use a workaround which is using the “Generate Orders for Subassemblies” button. I’m not sure if that was a customization that we had built or not, though. What we do is create the work order for the end product (Finished Good), and then click the “Generate Order for Subassemblies button.” We then can quickly go into each of those subassembly work orders that were created automatically to check the critical materials. 

It would be neat if there was a function in Acumatica that let you type in a product and generate a total number of possible pcs you can manufacture based on the amount of materials on hand. Hopefully something like that is in the pipeline!

Userlevel 3
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@kristianharianja You mentioned this:

 

“However when you generate child production order via MRP, there is no link established because MRP. At this stage, MRP seems to be designed to only look at quantity for planning (demand vs supply) not establishing link between parent and children. I assume when you need link you plan to allocate the finished item in the children order to its parent, cannot be used in other order. Also it looks like it’s a make to order type of item, not standard item you can simply take from stock. If this is the case you can mark the child items as marked for production and generate production order for them from parent order not via MRP.”

 

I have an issue where the detail inquiry is showing component demand for both a sub assembly and a finished good that has that subassembly within it. Sometimes the subs are run through as phantoms and sometimes we create their own production orders. Do you know of a way to get the detail inquiry to not show demand for components in subs when the sub will be used in the finished good?

Userlevel 2
Badge +1

As you mentioned, the biggest difference will be whether you are looking at the specific work order, or the purchasing as whole. This case is really useful when you have a particular item you are worried about, and you want to make sure that you can accomplish building this.  In my experience, this should be the exception, and MRP should be the rule. 

MRP is a different animal, but if you take a look, you will notice that these critical materials show on the MRP report.  There is a lot that goes into these MRP calculations, including min qty, max qty, lot qtys, forecasts, etc. MRP should be utilized when you are looking forward, and are ahead of the game. This is always a challenge in a manufacturing environment, but MRP will help you get a better view based upon the required dates.

As of right now, if you use the Material Requirements by Item Inquiry, it will give you what you are looking for, but it its a bit clunky in my opinion. I have seen a few people that will utilize the MRP display, and then will export to excel, and create a sum by item to get a consolidated total for purchasing. 

It would be nice if you could get a consolidated list directly out of Acumatica.

Jeremy, check out  this idea.  It sounds similar.

 

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