Implementing MRP Areas 

Implementation Options

The main reason for you to implement MRP areas is if you would like to plan materials, which are required in different shop floor areas, storage locations or by subcontractors, separately from one another.

As soon as you have activated materials requirements planning with MRP areas, this type of MRP is active at client level, that is, MRP will be carried out in this way in all plants.

Material requirements planning with MRP areas cannot be reversed.

Process Flow

You can implement material requirements planning with MRP areas in three steps:

  1. You convert the existing planning file entries at plant level to planning file entries at MRP area level.

During the conversion, the system creates a plant MRP area for every plant as a background job. This, however, will not affect your planning. The processes in material requirements planning and the planning results remain unaffected.

The conversion is also useful even if you do not work with MRP areas, but still have to plan for several plants, as the new planning file improves system performance during the planning run.
  1. You activate MRP with MRP areas in Customizing for MRP. This causes the MRP area field to appear in the applications of MRP and in related areas. When you enter the plant number, the system automatically fills the field with the number of the plant MRP area. The number of the plant MRP area is the same as the plant number.

This does not affect the planning run as the plant MRP area still corresponds to the present plant.
  1. You define an MRP area, for example, for a storage location. You then assign the materials that are to be planned for this storage location, by creating an MRP area segment in the material master.

Materials requirement planning for this storage location is then carried out separately. The storage location stock is no longer included in the available stock of the plant MRP area. The receipt and issue elements of this storage location (MRP area) are also not taken into account in the plant MRP area. They are only taken into account in the MRP area of the storage location.

If you have already worked with storage location MRP the system still carries out storage location MRP even after the activation of MRP areas. You need to decide in principle whether you want to continue using storage location MRP or whether you want to create MRP areas for the storage locations that are planned separately. It is not possible to simultaneously plan a material using storage location MRP and an MRP area for the same storage location.

If you decide to use MRP areas, you should then try to convert all storage locations that are planned separately to MRP areas in one step. Before you assign the material to an MRP area, you must remove the MRP indicator, which is located in the material master at the storage location organizational level (view MRP 4) in the screen area Storage location MRP.

Even if you have defined MRP areas in Customizing, the system plans the materials in the plant MRP area until you assign the MRP areas to the materials.

Only the assignment of one or more MRP areas to a material, by creating MRP area segments in the material master, actually cause changes in the material requirements planning.