What to buy, what to make, and when

What do we need? When do we need it? What is at risk? They sound simple. In a real factory, the answers depend on demand, BOMs, stock, purchasing, suppliers, lead times and production capacity all lining up.

Material requirements planning is how MaXXflow answers them, from your own data, before production is affected. It translates demand and BOMs into material, purchasing and production requirements, connects them to stock, allocations, supplier lead times, inbound orders, work centers and schedules, and surfaces what needs attention.

MaXXflow starts with demand: confirmed customer orders, forecasts, minimum stock levels or internal production plans. Then it works through what each order needs.

The inputs:

• Demand, which tells it what has to be produced.
• Bills of materials, which list the parts, subassemblies, raw materials and quantities each product needs.
• Inventory, split into what's available, what's already allocated to other jobs, and what's on order.
• Supplier lead times, which decide when a purchase has to be placed to arrive in time.
• Work orders, jobs and production dates, which give the plan its timing.

The outputs: what needs to be purchased, what needs to be made, when each action is needed, and where shortages or risks will hit.

Products can be set to be made in-house or bought, so a requirement turns into the right kind of action. And when a quote becomes a confirmed sales order, MaXXflow can reserve inventory and trigger the manufacturing orders behind it.

Say an order comes in for ten finished products. Each one needs a metal frame, two brackets, four fasteners and an electrical module.

That's ten frames, twenty brackets, forty fasteners and ten modules. You have enough brackets and fasteners on the shelf, but only six frames and two modules. So you need four more frames and eight more modules.

Now timing. The frames can be made in-house in three days. The modules take four weeks from the supplier. The module is the real risk, so you can act early: place the order now, adjust the delivery promise, check another supplier, or look at stock allocated to other jobs.

That's MRP's practical value. The problem is visible before production is blocked, not on the morning the job is due to start.

A list of what's short isn't the whole answer. You need to know which items are short, which are delayed, which jobs they affect, and which need a decision now.

Not every shortage matters equally. One on a low-priority job may be manageable. One on a critical order due next week needs action today. MaXXflow puts shortages, supplier delays, capacity pressure and at-risk work orders in front of the people who can act, so effort goes where it counts.

The client's promise for this is predictability: confidence in material requirements, lead times and supply timeframes, true demand against available stock, whether the capacity and schedule are feasible, and the cost and timing impact when something changes.

Some systems stop at a list of requirements. MaXXflow carries on into the work: is the part in stock, is it allocated to another job, does it need a purchase order, does its lead time put the date at risk, and can production go ahead as planned?

The point is to move from information to action, with purchasing, stores and production working from the same plan instead of their own versions of it.

MRP is only as reliable as what goes into it. If BOMs are incomplete or stock records don't match the shelf, the plan inherits the errors.

That doesn't mean everything has to be perfect before you start. It means getting the data for your first workflow into reasonable shape (items, BOMs, stock, suppliers, lead times and open orders) and improving it from there.

MRP also doesn't replace your planners and buyers. It gives experienced people better information and takes away much of the manual checking it currently takes to keep work moving.