Supply Chain Improvement using Oracle E-Business MRP.During the past couple of years, we continue to design planning processes using the Oracle E-Business (EBS) MRP suite as a process enabler. The environments that this article is based on our BizTech are manufacturing clients that all distribute their own products as well. This additionally focuses primarily on, what I often refer to as, inside the four walls of the Supply Chain. In order words, the activities relating to the Value Chain that pertains to the planning and scheduling of Supply and Demand not the logistics. There are plenty of opportunities in moving products around more efficiently or most cost-effective in the logistics areas, but that can be for another day.

There are a couple of keys strategic initiatives that companies will take on to improve their supply-chain performance that I like to mention briefly. These can be changed concurrently while focusing the move tactical procedures described in the next section. They are product rationalization, Service level commitment procedures, and Demand Planning. Changes or improvements made in all three of Business strategies these will greatly improve the performance of a company’s Supply Chain. A quote that I often like to make, “The more time spent on Demand Planning the better the Supply Chain downstream processes will run. “

Many of the successful Lean environment s case studies are companies that make Widgets. Widgets in this context are referring to standard products with customization or options. The fewer options that you have in your products most often reduce the complexities in your supply chain. Couple this with your delivery time commitments and service level measurements things will improve. One example that had a great deal of success was making delivery commitments based on whether you have a customer forecast or not. This was in a semicustom product environment, where a customer would provide a forecast. If the forecast existed one lead time was used. If not, the total lead time would be used to provide a shipments date. This carried into the on-time delivery metric, one for forecasted items and one for non-forecasted. This links with your Demand Planning approach that in this client’s case was pretty well established.

At a more tactical level using standard EBS functionality, the following flow can be achieved.

Deploying this process module has helped companies using EBS reach the following goals:

Increase products and not increase headcount in Operations. Increase Service levels Reduce Inventory levels Reduce non-value added replenishment tasks.

Here are the basic to achieve the procurement portion of the flow.

The following are the steps for each Planner (buy items only for now) to get basic MRP working.

Set all item planning valueso Must have Purchasing List priceo Should have lead times establishedo Review Lot sizing rules.

Assign Safety stocks to your items Enter forecasts for all saleable items that will be consumed by actual sales orders. Use planning

bills and percentage of popularity for configurable items. Create Sourcing rules and assignments

o Need strategy for common partso Should use planner and buyer code to stratify parts but can use suppliers to get started.

Set Planner workbench preferences and folders Learn basic navigation in Planning Workbench Look at Planned Orders grouped by Suggested Supplier and auto-create Purchase Orders.

We have plenty of testimonials that prove just by using this flow, Planners/Buyers can handle more items, inventory levels can be lowered, and customer service levels improved. My last comment on this topic is to adopt the following Creeds.