Re: Re: Order Policy A with Safety Stock?

Without knowing much of your operations and interfaces, I will assume a few  
things here. 
 
If you are using safety stock and organizational components are using  
"availability" to respond to customer inquiries, you would have a customer  
service 
issue without an experienced customer service person to look past the  
availability figure and review on-hand and requirements to actual availability  
as to 
customer requirements in realtime. 
 
If your MRP is reviewed daily for exceptions, and orders are placed daily,  
only a 24 hour lag would occur after a COM demand is entered to satisfy the  
unavailable product.  Also, if COM has a sufficient lead time, and the  
customer 
requirements are outside the leadtime, no issue.
 
If these items are so important to your firm, take them out of the MRP  loop, 
remove safety stock, and configure the item to a re-order point type item.  
This will act as safety stock, but show availability for the old safety stock  
level. CAUTION here, if these items are critical, they must be reviewed by  
senior planner buyers daily who are adept at this type of old MAPICS  planning 
that was around before the MRP module introduction. Run the re-order  report 
daily and act on that report sorted as your firm requires. If you are use  to 
using MRP for release after review, this requires more work in that the PO  
must 
be entered manually. BUT if these are the exception to the norm, the  
separation from MRP may be an avenue to increased customer service.
 
MRP is great for the norm, but I have found it requires from COM users a  
more than COM knowledge of MAPICS. COM individuals, customer service, order  
entry, and outside marketing & sales,  normally have a higher turnover  rate 
than 
the supply chain group.
 
I usually attempt to adjust the supply chain system to upgrade the  
performance of other entities and implement supply chain methods
that are not 100% MRP or 100%  safety stock or 100% reorder point, or  100% 
discreet order. 
 
Dennis Guy Vaillant