We upgraded to 2024.11.19 last week and since then MRP has been generating suggestions that leaves us with a balance, even though we have no min on hand/safety stock set for this or any of our parts. This is happening on only some parts. We have a snapshot of the environment from the day we went live in our test enviro, and the issue is not there (MRP is running clean). I really can’t explain it, or figure out how to purge whatever is influencing this. I should also note this is happening mostly to our highest volume (most data heavy) parts.
Screenshots of time phase and planning parameters below - I highlighted where it looks like it’s trying to stay around 16,800 units on hand (which is coincidentally the max lot size but I am confident this is a red herring. I tried to remove the max lot and reran MRP, which had no effect. Also on some of the other parts that are experiencing this issue, the balance MRP is maintaining is not anywhere near the max lot). Any suggestions for troubleshooting would be immensely appreciated!!!
That is coming from a forecast. Your forecast expects you to have sales orders to consume those parts. If you put in a sales order within the forecast window, you should see that number decrease.
Thanks for the reply! I’m not sure that’s the issue. The unfirm jobs are suggesting approximately 16,800ish units over what my forecasts require. If I follow the production suggestions we would be left with an excess of almost 17,000 units per month which is problematic for our business on many levels.
Max lot size would only break up the six figure(ish) supply needed into lots of no more than 16,800. If you removed that and ran MRP you should have seen one job to supply each forecast demand shown in the screenshots since your days of supply is set to 28. If you didn’t see that, then you either aren’t running a full regen MRP or you have some other problem going on.
Does your Time Phase eventually hit 0 balance? It seems like your max lot size and your days of supply are fighting against each other. What is your desired outcome here? Do you want to aggregate your jobs to once a month, or do you want to build a max of 16,800 at a time?
At these forecast levels you are going to need 5+ (16,800) jobs per month. From a math standpoint, it seems like your days of supply should be somewhere around 5-7 days if you’re trying to build these once a week.
Hi Chad,
I took a screen shot of the last line in Time Phase (below), where you can see we would be left with a balance of 16,818. Our max lot size is set as such to ensure that we don’t have too-long running jobs. We want to break up our jobs so that they max out at one week runs, so we can efficiently close the jobs off. We also have multiple molds that can run the same part so it allows us to run in parallel if needed.
The expected outcome was that the balance remaining after the forecasted consumption would be 0 - meaning we produced what we needed to supply the full forecast and nothing more. The fact that we are consistently left with a balance is what is problematic because the implication is that we are holding inventory and overproducing by 16,800ish units.
We thought maybe there was corrupted data in the background that is driving a phantom requirement, but we are unsure how to validate this or fix it. I cannot otherwise explain this excess quantity that consistently lives on this part through to the end of the time phase.
Let me know if that better illustrates the issue.
There could be an underlying data issue. If so, you would likely need to get support involved.
In general, whenever I am troubleshooting something like this, I would remove the variables and then add them back in one at a time. It would be wise to do so in a testing environment so as not to disrupt production and/or purchasing too much.
If you remove the Days of Supply and the Max Lot Size and run a full regen MRP you should get completely different results. Then add the Max Lot Size back in and run a full regen again and compare results. Finally, add your days of supply back in, but I think you should target a much smaller number for this part.
I think we found the cause, thanks to an old EpiUsers thread (Purchasing suggestions growing inventory - #6 by Gil_V)
which indicated that the lock functionality was a contributing factor to the excess balances (we lock our jobs). We unlocked them and reran MRP, and it corrected the issue.
Need to work on the next steps, but at least the cause has been confirmed. Thank you to all for your expertise!!
