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1. Overview
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1. Overview

Master production scheduling (MPS) is a planning system which serves several important purposes:

  1. Increases visibility into future demand.

  2. Provides capability for anticipating future demand.

  3. Drives the plan for lower level components (i.e., material requirements) based on the forecast.

Typically, MPS is used to plan items having independent demand. Independent demand items are defined as those items which derive their demand directly from customer requirements through sales orders. By contrast, dependent demand items are normally purchased items and subassemblies. The demand for dependent items is derived indirectly—that is, based on the demand for their parent items in a bill of materials (BOM).

In this section, we will demonstrate xTuple ERP's MPS functionality, using a production plan called COLLECTORS-2011. We have linked a planning item, COLLECTORS-LINE, to this production plan. Both the plan and the planning item are included in the data for the xTuple ERP demo database.

Note

The scenarios described in this section refer to items and other data found in the xTuple ERP hosted demo. It's easy to sign up for a hosted demo. The hosted demo gives you access to the full range of commercial xTuple ERP features so you can try them for yourself.

The BOM for the COLLECTORS-LINE planning item is composed of three MPS planned items, each of which have the following quantities per:

  • BTRUCK1: .5

  • RTRUCK1: .3

  • WTRUCK1: .2

You can see the actual BOM for the COLLECTORS-LINE planning item in your demo database. The following screenshot shows the BOM, which includes the three items and their respective quantities per:

Planning item Bill of Materials

The production plan for the COLLECTORS-LINE planning item currently contains forecast periods for three months in 2011. In the example we will be using, we will actually adjust the dates and quantities for these periods to accommodate anticipated future demand.

Note

In our scenario, we will be forecasting using a planning item—a special type of item used to defined families or lines of products. However, the system also allows you to place individual MPS items on a production schedule.

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Chapter 3. Master Scheduling Home 2. Updating and Releasing Production Plans