MISys Manufacturing – Determine Inactive Items using a Master Production Schedule.

Knowing which items are required for future production is the foundation of good materials management. Similarly, knowing which items are not required allows for setting those items as inactive and potentially purging them. Doing so provides value because it directs organizational efforts on the needed items and away from what is not needed. A couple related examples are that of stockroom space can potentially be freed up and balance sheets will become more accurate.

The idea of using the Master Production Schedule (MPS) is that since it is used to provide visibility of all the items needed to fill a sales forecast, it can also do the reverse.

An example of using the MPS for this purpose happens during periodic materials planning at which time planners will often run MPS simulations to predict which items are needed for the next business cycle. They do this by initializing a MPS with ‘No Items’ and posting a Scheduling Batch of the sales forecast thereby loading all top-level demands. The MPS output is a prediction of all required items needed to support the forecast, including dates and quantities.

After producing the list of required items generated by the MPS, it is straight forward to determine which items are not needed. Simply compare the list to the item master, the items that do not match up can potentially be set as inactive and/or purged.

If you are interested in more information related to determining Inactive Items using a Master Production Schedule in your MISys software, please contact us here at Central Nervous Systems.