Focusing material requirements planning (MRP) towards performance

This paper looks at the successes and disappointments of MRP. It studies numerous articles to determine what the key shortcomings of MRP are. Next, it investigates if these failures are correctable, and what the consequences of not correcting these de®ciencies means. This article considers alternatives that have been discussed in the current literature. Last of all this article discusses whether the improvements these alternatives suggest are sucient to make MRP worth salvaging, or whether MRP is a system that needs to be discarded in favor of systems such as JIT (Just-in-Time), Optimized Production Technology (OPT), Theory of Constraints (TOC), and Bottleneck Allocation Methodology (BAM). Ó 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.