MRP Dates Education

Do we have a correct understanding here & what if anything are we doing wrong?

We run our MRP500 & MRP600 regeneration every week night using a planning 
date of the Monday of the current week being planned, in which each of our 4 
facilities are planned individually & we run CAP600 twice a week using a 
horizon date of the Monday two weeks into the future, in which all facilities 
are planned as a group run.  Our Time Buckets are in 7 day intervals.

We recently promoted some individuals within planning departments & the new 
folks have been asking reasonable questions like "How am I supposed to be 
able to know this or that?" which has led to other people questioning whether 
we are doing things the best way, and whether our general in-house education 
in how MRP works is satisfactory.  I have read the MRP & CAP & SYS 
documentation from cover to cover several times & I still do not feel like I 
understand it all.  I think I need a class in general principles of MRP 
irrespective of BPCS, followed by a class in that portion of MRP lingo that 
BPCS uses how.

Tuesday of this week, the Customer Sales dept entered our first order on a 
new part, that the customer needed rather urgently, and overtime was 
authorized to avoid damage from lead time violation.  Tues nite's MRP full 
regeneration got the 1st & 2nd level sub-assemblies planned correctly, but 
down around levels 4 & 5 there were requirements outside the Demand Time 
Fence for materials we had never used before & the MRP essentially said 
"that's overdue, cannot be manufactured in the past, ignore it, don't even 
try to plan it." so it did not go on the production schedule, or raw 
materials needing to be purchased.

Wednesday, a Production Planner, who had been told that this was the first 
run of a new part & who knew that this happens with first runs when there are 
short lead times imposed by the customer, went to the BOM & manually planned 
shop orders for all the materials needed for the new part.  Wednesday night's 
MRP correctly planned the new customer requirements right down to all the 
lowest components, because the activity flag had been triggered by the 
Production Planner's release of the items missing from Tuesday night MRP.  
Our Production people know from experience that this is a problem only on the 
first run of a new part ... later orders from that customer for that part 
will go through the MRP correctly, even when the cumulative lead time drives 
needs into last week or beyond.

There's talk of running MRP using a planning date of a week prior to the 
current week, but on complex parts 1 week into the past might not be enough 
... only rare certain customer parts have this problem.  Someone told me that 
the sales dept is supposed to TELL ME to run MRP with an earlier date 
whenever this scenario occurs, but they have NEVER told me any such thing, so 
I believe that the person who thinks the sales dept is supposed to do such 
notifications is in fact misinformed.  Someone else told me that ALL lead 
times are a certain way, when it is apparent from the system that they are 
misinformed.  So obviously we have had some break-downs in corporate memory 
of what our procedures are supposed to be.  I suspect we need some kind of 
report listing stuff that could not be planned by MRP because it is in 
violation of the business rules.

Our staffing is such that Purchase Planning Human review is once a week per 
facility & Shop Floor Planning Human review is twice a week per facility, 
unless the Sales Department provides notification of the need to check out 
the consequences of a scenario like this one.  In this case, the Sales Dept 
did in fact notify the Planning departments, and the system worked correctly. 
 The problem is in the training of new people to recognize all the exceptions 
to general rules & a review of why do we have to have these work-arounds.

Al Macintyre
BPCS 405 CD on AS/436 V4R3
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