Abstract:
Material requirement planning is a technique for planning and controlling the amount of inventories of parts or raw materials so that the manufacturing need can be satisfied without too much or too little inventory leading to a lower manufacturing cost. The aim of this study is to take advantage of the speed and accuracy of a microcomputer system in the process of planning and controlling the amount of inventory appropriate for the manufacturing process. The present material requirement planning uses as a case study parts used in three models of automobile exhaust pipes manufactured by Siam Parts and Engineering Co. Ltd. The planning utilizes three types of data; master schedule, bill of material and inventory record. These data belong to the month of August, 1985, and are used to plan the demand of raw material for the next three months. Also this study makes use of four separate inventory records : inventory record consisting of safety stock of finished exhaust pipes with a large lot size; inventory record consisting of safety stock of finished exhaust pipes and ordered parts with a Large lot size; inventory record consisting of safety stock of finished exhaust pipes, ordered parts and manufactured parts with a large lot size ; and inventory record consisting of finished exhaust pipes, ordered parts and manufactured parts with a small lot size. The analysis compares the cost and amount of inventory calculated from each of the four inventory records with the actual cost and actual inventory. The result shows that the predicted inventory from the material requirement planning from any of the four inventory records is lower than the actual inventory, and that the predicted cost from any of the four inventory records is lower than the actual cost. The study also shows that although an increase of safety stock increases the cost, it prevents a shortage of finished goods. Reduction of cost can be attained by reducing the size of inventory or reducing the lot .size while keeping the same level of safety stock. This study still has some limitations. The analysis cannot compare the amount and cost of every inventory item since the amount and cost of some items have not been recorded Furthermore, the value for the lot size is an estimate which may not correspond to the actual value. However, the study can serve as a guideline to adjust the amount of safety stock and lot size by adjusting the time period. In addition, the microcomputer system used has some limitation in terms of memory and diskette storage capacity. This latter problem can be alleviated by changing to a microcomputer system with larger memory and with larger storage capacity diskette such as an IBM AT system or a system with a hard disk."