The Practitioner's Guide to POLCA

Appendix CPerspectives on Applying MRP, Kanban, or Some Other Card-Based Systems to HMLVC Production Environments

Most manufacturing companies today use some type of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. Such systems include a Material Requirements Planning (MRP) module as an important part of their functionality. The goal of the MRP module is to plan both materials and manufacturing resources to ensure smooth functioning of the production system. An important part of this is planning the capacity of workcenters as well as the timing and flow of products through these workcenters. As jobs are released to production, the planning may be followed by additional functionality for shop floor control of these jobs. Since many companies already ...