MRP Suggestions

Are there any add on modules for improving the accuracy of mrp suggestions for Navision role tailored client?

I currently get 400+ suggestions when running my mrp for a week and only actually order 20-30 parts.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Hi Mike,

What exactly do you think an add-on would be able to do which Dynamics NAV doesn’t really do today? The calculate plan function in the system does exactly what you ask it to, if you have setup the planning parameters of your items correctly. I’m not saying that the system is perfect (not at all), but if you get so many suggestions that you don’t need, then in my mind it sounds like there is something wrong with the way your system is setup. Because that should not happen.

Hi Erik,

Thanks for taking time to reply to my post I greatly appreciate it.

It is possible I am missing something in the planning parameters or some other facet of Navision. I have only been using the system for 6 months and have had no formal training for Navision. I have effectively set up parts in other systems and not had the issues I am with Nav. So I am not sure if I don’t understand the system or if it is something else. In either case below is what I would like to achieve with an add on.

One thing I would like it to do is to create two reports. One dealing with reschedules and cancels and another to deal with new orders. I am currently using the planning work sheet for both. The most important thing I would hope for the reschedule report to do is not to suggest quantity changes and only suggest reschedules and cancels. With our business model it doesn’t make sense to reduce quantities as we continue to use the same parts over and over again with limited chance of change to bill of material. This may cause a small spike in inventory but we are willing to accept that. Both reports would need to take into consideration any open purchase order to determine if a new purchase order needs to be created or if an already existing purchase order can be rescheduled to meet the demand. This would eliminate the new order suggestions I am seeing where Nav tells me to cancel one order and place another for the same part at a different date. In my limited understanding of Nav it looks to reschedule orders with in the parts reorder cycle time? If it is outside of that it suggests a new order? These two things I believe would clean up most of the suggestions I delete every week off of my planning worksheet.

I hope this makes sense. I am not in the office so can’t give examples.

Thanks

Mike

I could increase reorder cycle times to reduce the cancel and reorder suggestions (if that’s what Nav uses). I don’t believe that this would do any thing to reduce the change quantities. As I said I am a novice in Nav.

Hi Mike,

The inventory planning tool in NAV is one of the most complex functions in the system and the number of different parameters having an effect on the result are a lot. So I understand that you would like to have report which will give you a result which is much easier to understand. In fact I wanted to do the same when they first introduced the calculate plan functionality in its current way. But not only did I find out that creating that report would take a lot of time. I also found out that setting the right parameters made the system give me the exact result I wanted. And learned to ignore the re-planning warnings which

So I’ll suggest that you create a clean demo company and a number of items similar to the ones you have in your production/live database and start testing the different parameters systematically. I can recommend this link http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh173147%28v=nav.70%29.aspx to get started. I know it’s for NAV 2013, but except for a few new options, then it basically works the same. The page includes links to the different parameters available.

And when I have said that, then I definitely will recommend that you hire a Navision consultant specialized in the supply chain planning and manufacturing (most “normal” consultants don’t even understand it fully), to go over any issues you still might have. It is very difficult to say what is going wrong in your system, unless you have direct access to your system. So getting a consultant on-site with you will be the most effective and fast method. Especially if the system wasn’t setup correctly in the first place.

If your background is not within MPS and inventory planning, then I’ll also suggest that you might read some books about the topic, which will give you a more theoretical introduction to the subject, and it doesn’t have to be specific about NAV, as NAV in general uses the same terms as most other ERP/MRP systems.