One of the many benefits of Sage ERP is the number of 3rd party vendors that provide comprehensive integrated solutions. These solutions fall into many categories based on your industry and specific needs. One innovative developer is AutoSimply. AutoSimply provides many integrated solutions such as Manufacturing, MRP, Quality Control, Shop Floor Control, Bar Code Scanning, Sales Anywhere, and Sales Pricing which all work within the Sage UI and are written in the Sage 300 SDK. As a result, they have the look and feel of the core Sage 300 modules and show up on your Sage desktop the same way. What I want to review in this article is the MRP solutions. There are two options. Which one you chose depends on whether you are a manufacturing company or purely distribution/retail. For Manufacturing companies, the MRP solution they offer is called Production Planning. For distribution/retail companies they offer a similar product called Purchase Planning. Both follow the same concepts. The primary difference is that Purchase Planning doesn’t require their manufacturing module since it is meant for distribution/retail companies.
I consider these products a must have when it comes to assisting Purchasing with easily being able to determine the product that needs to be purchased and when. To do this, this module allows you to assign the following information for every item in inventory:
- Network – this allows you to link an inventory location or a combination of locations into Networks. By doing this you can review purchasing requirements for a specific location, group of locations, or the entire company.
- Order type – For manufacturing companies you can designate an item as purchased, manufactured, or subcontracted.
- Maximum stock for internal notation purposes
- Minimum stock required
- Minimum Order quantity as dictated by your vendor
- Order lead time
- For manufactured items
- MFG setup time
- MFG Run time
- Order multiple – if a vendor requires you to purchase items in a specific minimum quantity
- Buyer – you can assign specific buyers to specific items
It should be noted that the above information can be entered through the UI or imported directly from a spreadsheet.
By having the option to add this information, the MRP module has all of the information it requires to determine the requirements for your inventory. In addition to this you also have the option to set your work calendar where you define your work week as well as holidays. This way the system knows not to recommend a purchase or manufacturing of an item with a due date that falls on a non-business day.
This module also allows you to enter or import forecasts. Forecasts can be either forecasted orders or forecasted purchases. You can create unlimited forecasts. You can run your MRP reports based on any of your forecasts or no forecast at all.
Once the item requirements are setup, then it allows you to perform a planning run (planning runs can also be automated to run on any interval). The planning run then compiles the following information:
- Forecasts – Forecasted purchases and/or sales orders
- Sales Orders – Based on Expected Ship Date
- Purchase Orders – Based on Expected Receipt Date
- Inventory – Quantity on Hand + Min Qty., Order Qty requirements, Lead Time
- Calendar
- Bill of Materials – for Finished Good items on Sales Order, to drill into required components
- Released Manufactured Orders
Once a planning run is completed, the MRP then allows you to run a purchase advise or MFG advise report. This is a summary explaining what items need to be purchased based on the rules set up in the MRP module.
Another feature is that this module can also allow you to automatically produce manufacturing orders and purchase requisitions directly from the MRP module.
Another great feature is the ability to print or query any item and see a chronological breakdown of item requirements showing each receipt/issuance of that item by date along with a running total of stock quantities. In addition it will include recommended purchase/manufacturing orders along with what dates it is recommending for either a PO or MO.
It is this reason that with all the features provided by the purchase planning and production planning modules combined with its built in integration, that it is one of the most popular and requested add-ons for our clients. If you have any questions or want us to provide a demo of this product, please contact us.
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