Page 59 - Orlicky's Material Requirements Planning

40 PART 1 Perspective

Manufacturing needs lean and the other pull-based methods to evolve in the “new
normal.” Lean needs an effective demand-driven planning approach in order to bring
that evolution to reality.

QUESTION 4: MRP PROGRESS
IN THE LAST 30 YEARS?
Why has MRP not progressed significantly in the last 30 years?
Software providers, consultants, and the academic community have had ample
opportunity to fix MRP’s shortcomings. Why have they failed?
There are many knowledgeable experts in demand-driven techniques such as lean
and drum-buffer-rope (DBR). Unfortunately, many of these experts do not understand
the role planning technology must play to bring those techniques to full realization across
a complex enterprise and supply chain. Many of them advocate the elimination of tech-
nology as the true measure of success.
Experts in variability and volatility tend to be less enterprise-focused and more spe-
cific-event-focused. Variability must be considered in relation to its impact across a holis-
tic system. All variation does not have the same impact. Reducing variability does not
necessarily improve the overall process. There are places where it must be protected
against in order to keep the system stable and effective.
The generation that developed MRP is all but lost. Most people who still have an in-
depth knowledge of how MRP really works are not in software companies or academia—
they are seasoned planners working in private industry. Even some of the largest ERP
software companies have only a small number of people (sometimes only two or three in
the largest ERP providers) who truly understand what MRP is and how it works. Rarely
does even the largest provider have software developers with any real-world experience
using the tools they are building. The big ERP software companies cannot and will not
solve a problem they cannot see. This is evidenced by the fact that none has addressed
the core issues identified in this section. The proliferation of planning work-arounds
proves this.
But there is light at the end of the tunnel. At the time of this writing, we know of
several next-generation products that will allow for extremely flexible and unfettered
configuration in alignment with the recommendations in Part 4. This is not enough, but
these products do remove hard-coded restrictions that have hampered MRP users in the
“new normal.”