Grid enabled MRP process improvement under distributed database environment

The material requirement planning (MRP) process is crucial when software packages, like enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, are used in the production planning for manufacturing enterprises to ensure that appropriate quantities of raw materials and subassemblies are provided at the right time. Whereas little attention has been paid to the architectural aspects of MRP process in academic studies, in practice, reports are often made of its time consuming characteristics due to intensive interactions with databases and difficulty in real time processing. This paper proposes a grid enabled MRP process in a distributed database environment and demonstrates the performance improvement of the proposed process by a simulation study. 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.