DEVELOPMENT OF A COMPUTER BASED MRP SYSTEM ON SIMULATED PRODUCTION DATA OF A MANUFACTURING UNIT JAIWANT D. DONGRECAR 1 & T. P. SINGH 2 1 Research Scholar, Symbiosis Institute of Technology, Symbiosis International University, Pune, Maharashtra, India 2 Director, Symbiosis Institute of Technology, Symbiosis International University, Pune, Maharashtra, India ABSTRACT Material requirement planning is an essential activity in a manufacturing organisation to ensure that right quantity of materials are available at the right time and the inventories are not excessive. MRP helps a great deal in carrying out production efficiently and maintaining valid priorities contained in master production schedule (MPS). This paper presents a study in which an MRP system has been developed on simulated data of a manufacturing unit engaged in the production of large variety of automobile components in small batches. The system takes inputs from MPS, bill of material (BOM) and considers factors like first time through, delays in processes, scrap rates, normal and crash lead times and develops an algorithm and a computer programme for MRP. The system has been applied and validated on the simulated data of the manufacturing unit for its efficiency and applicability. KEYWORDS: MRP, MPS, BOM, Scrap Rate, Crash Lead-Times INTRODUCTION In today’s highly competitive manufacturing industry, it is very important to supply customer’s goods of high quality at competitive price in the time frames required by the customers. To realize this, the manufacturing units require right quality and quantity of materials and components for efficient and economic production. At the same time, the inventories need to be at the lowest levels to ensure that excessive money is not bound in inventories. An MRP system aims to accomplish this by precisely calculating the quantity of material required by considering inventory on hand. It also makes sure that materials are received in the inventory not much earlier than the time at which they are needed for production. An MRP system takes inputs from master production schedule (MPS), bill of materials (BOM) and available inventory in the system. It operates on a logic that net requirements are gross requirements minus the inventory on hand. MRP system gives its outputs to production control system to ensure priority and capacity control. MRP is a time phased priority-planning technique that calculates material requirements and schedules supply to meet demand across all products and parts in one or more plants [1]. Information Technology plays a major role in designing and implementing material requirements planning systems and processes as it provides information about manufacturing needs (linked with customer demand) as well as information about inventory levels. MRP techniques focus on optimizing inventory. MRP techniques are used to explode bills of material, to calculate net material requirements and plan future production. MRP is a computer- based production planning and inventory control system. For decades, the trusty MRP system continues to be used in one form or another by many manufacturers. Sure, at most medium-size and larger companies, MRP has been dominated by a client-server-based multi-application enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. However, it still plays an important role. As organizations continue to seek ways to improve their overall performance and new computer technology supports industry to update and renovate information systems, computer applications to support manufacturing have developed rapidly in recent years. So far, for developing a flawless MRP system, researchers have studied many International Journal of Industrial Engineering & Technology (IJIET) ISSN 2277-4769 Vol. 3, Issue 4, Oct 2013, 65-72 © TJPRC Pvt. Ltd.