This chapter contains these topics:
To understand key MRP multi-facility scheduling concepts
To define supply and demand relationships among your branch/plants
To use the branch relationships chart to review your supply and demand relationships in a graphical hierarchical format
To generate a multi-facility requirements plan
To review the time series for the multi-facility requirements plan
To review and process transfer messages for the multi-facility requirements plan
In an MRP multi-facility operation, planned orders at the demand facility are the source of demand at the supply facility. You set up and maintain multi-facility schedules to:
Manage the movement of component material through multiple production facilities
Use assembly lines at one plant to begin the assembly of a product and a different plant for final assembly
Handle all resupply movements throughout the manufacturing network
Formalize the processing of transfer items among your manufacturing plants
Create internal transfer orders to help ensure traceability of material and their costs between facilities
Ensure that the branch from which you are ordering has enough inventory in stock to fill the order, or schedule the supply plant to produce it
Schedule production according to realistic time frames
You can define facility relationships at any level of detail for an entire facility, a product group, master planning family, or an individual item number. In addition, you can incorporate all your facilities into a single planning schedule.
In MRP, the system transfers items among your manufacturing plants at the component level. The system transfers component items by:
Generating a purchase order at the demand plant for the supply plant
Generating a sales order from the demand plant at the supply plant
In the following example, the demand plant (M55) receives components from three different supply plants. Supply plants can also manufacture the end deliverable item.
A breakdown of the percent received from each supply branch/plant indicates that M55 satisfies 80 percent of its required demands from the three supply branch/plants. In this case, the demand plant assembly also supplies the remaining 20 percent of the end item.
MRP multi-facility scheduling consists of the following tasks:
Setting up multi-facility requirements plans
Generating multi-facility requirements plans
Working with MRP multi-facility planning output
The system records MRP multi-facility information in the following tables: