Understanding Resource Requirements Planning

After you have entered resource units and resource profiles, you run the Resource Requirements Planning Regeneration program to generate the resource requirements plan. The plan contains long-range estimates of the capacity needs at the work centers. These needs might include:

• The number of production staff that you need to hire to meet future production needs.

• The number of additional machines that you will need for a new product line.

• The real estate that you will need to buy for additional facilities.

Because you use the forecast in place of work orders for long-range planning, the data that this program creates is an estimate of capacity needs that is based on the forecast. The resource profile offsets required dates for capacity.

The types of data that you can create include:

• Over-capacity or under-capacity messages.

• Period summaries about work centers.

• New load profile information based on the type of work center load:

  • Rated profile is the number of available units from the Work Center Resource Units table (F3007).

  • Loaded profile is the forecasted load that is derived from the master planned item's forecasts and their resource profiles.

  • Percent resource used is the loaded profile divided by the rated profile.

  • Resource available is the rated profile minus the loaded profile.

  • Accumulated resources available is a running total of the resources that are available.

When you set up the versions for planning the resource requirements, you need to determine the data selection for work centers, branch/plants, and dispatch groups that you want to process.