ABSTRACT
Most companies with manufacturing processes of any size or complexity use some form of computerized Material Requirement Planning (MRP) package. Most current MRP systems are more accurately classified as “MRPII,” the acronym standing for Manufacturing Resource Planning. MRP/MRPII systems help schedule both material requirements and production operations. One of the big problems with MRP applications is that they’re what’s referred to as “infinite capacity” systems — the schedules they produce don’t consider any capacity constraints. This “infinite capacity” limitation is probably the best-known and most widely discussed disadvantage of the MRP algorithm. However, we’ll see later that it’s not the only one. Consequently, MRP creates some problems that we’ll discuss in more detail below — problems that DBR repairs.
