Reduction of MRP Messages

[azklasse]

Hi! We are using Lot for Lot Processing. Most of the Messages are from Sales Orders. Our customers change their requested date many times before they finally want the product. Due to these Push outs/Pull Ins we get many messages to Increase 50 from one Purchase Order and Decrease the same 50 another Purchase Order just to accomodate the date changes OR to Decrease the Quantiy from one Purchase Order and Place a new order for the same quantity. Sometimes this may be to change the day by less than a week. We have damper days already turned on. But the Purchasing person reviews each message against Supply/Demand to determine the "real" needs. These messages come back after the complete MRP regen every week. (Over 1700 messages in total). I am reluctant to freeze the sales order, because there could be a real quantity change that needs to be cancelled or ordered. I am in the process of writing a netting report to net out all of the messages, but is there a way to reduce them altogether??
Thanks in Advance!
Heather

 

[DSauve]

Heather,

Have you tried using a Periods of Supply order policy code AND value. We use Order Policy Code of "4" with Value Order Policy of 49. This will consolidate all requests within the next 49 days into one order. Of course, you can pick the # of days that would work best for your environment.

 

[Heather]

Don -- Thanks for the quick response. I haven't tried periods of supply yet. But, if I understand you correctly, with periods of supply at 49 days it will consolidate all of the messages into one order, but what date will it use? Does periods of supply consolidate in intervals? (ie everything from today thru day 49 into one PO, then day 50 thru day 99 into another po, etc?)
I really need to ignore +,- messages if the Requested Date is within perhaps 10 days apart. Example: Request 50 pieces for Jan 5 2005 (well beyond the 49 day window) Now the date has moved to Dec 25th. The system will now still issue a decrease or cancel message for Jan 5 and an increase or order message for Dec 25th. Since this is only a 10 day window, we probably would not make a change. Keep in mind that our customers change their dates weekly and sometimes daily. We would drive our suppliers crazy if we tried to change our Purchase Orders every time the Customer moves a date by a few days.
However, managing this manually is not very productive.

Thanks! Heather

 

[Krofire.com]

Other classic techniques for reducing your number of Messages are these: increase your Freeze Fence for WO's & PO's. Set a Firm Planned Order Status for WO's in your R3482. Delete the A (Warning), G (Increase Order), L (Decrease Order) and F (Frozen Order) Messages from UDC 34/MT.

You are already using Damper Days. Beyond that the Periods of Supply suggestion is good. You may also wish to reduce your Message Display Fence. Fixed Order Quantities and Minmum Order Quantities can have a similar effect as Periods of Supply but you enevitabley drive up your stock balances and costs.

 

[janjack]

Hi,
I have recently got into JD edwards product in a pharmaceutical industry. I am in search of the reasons for having many MRP messages in our current JDE config. In order me to get started, could you please give me a few general tips which would drive me to figure out why that many messages and how to reduce them.

Many thanks

Ocal

 

[Devo]

You might want to look at your order policy code for your items. If you are using lot for lot, then you will get a new message for every day that there is demand. In other words if you have demand on 12/1 for 100 pcs and demand on 12/5 for a 100pcs, you will get 2 messages for 100 pcs each.

If you set your Order Policy to Periods of Supply and your Value Order Policy to 7 days, then the system will consolidate the demand for those 7 days and give you one message to either create a work order or purchase order to fulfill that demand. In the example above, you would get on message for 200 pcs that would be due on 12/1.

Another place to check is your Message Display Fence. Many people set this to display messages way out into the future. If you are running your MRP on a regular basis, you may want to limit this dispaly to no more then 30 or 60 days. Most people are not going to respond to messages if action does not need to be taken for another 30 days.

 

[janjack]

Re: RE: Reduction of MRP Messages

nice tips to start with...Thanks

 

[Lawala]

Heather

We use Periods of Supply set to 5 days and 10 days for certain purchased items, an this removed a lot of eroneous messages we were recieving. And to add to this, we also us "fixed order Quantity" for items which are fast runners, and we make all the time. This also cuts out a lot of messages and ridiculous quantities.

Al

 

[harmeyerjr]

Some additional thoughts on reducing the number of MRP messages:

1. Freeze your open purchase orders (this will eliminate the increase, decrease, defer messages without having to delete these message types from the UDC) - increases in quantities of sales orders will be reflected in a new purchase order. However, a decrease in a sales order will not be reflected. Our policy has been once a purchase order is released to the vendor, no changes are made to it. Changes are generally made with a new purchase order. Fortunately, we rarely will have to cancel a purchase order.

2. Utilize the quantities row exit on the item/branch application - P41026. The two key quantities fields for consolidating order quantities are the multiple order quantity and minimumu order quantity. Make sure that the values entered are stated in terms of the primary unit of measure. We had a situation where the material planner stated these fields in terms of the purchasing unit of measure. This generated millions of unnecessary records.

Hope this helps. I would be glad to discuss further.

Have a good day.