Material demands can be linked to their replenishments, either through a Firm link, or a Planning link.
A Firm link is a fixed link between a demand and its replenishment.
A Planning link is a temporary link; new demands or replenishments for the same item may cause MRP to relink a demand to a different replenishment.
To dictate the type of link MRP should create, each item can be set with its own Ordering Method to either a Jobbing or Batch item.
A Jobbing item will have replenishments firm linked to demands when recommendations are actioned via MRP.
- Replenishments will be satisfied on an individual demand basis.
- The Jobbing setting lends itself to items that are bought or made to order.
A Batch item can have its recommendations combined using aggregation.
- Replenishment orders actioned via MRP are planning linked to demands, so change to either demands or replenishments to the item may result in existing replenishment orders being relinked by MRP to different demand orders.
- The Batched setting lends itself to items that are generally bought or made for stock.
In Demand Schedule the Ordering Method can be manually switched before actioning recommendations from MRP, to override the setting on the stock item for a particular demand.
Note: Manual changes to the ordering method in the Demand Schedule are lost when the Demand Schedule and MRP are refreshed, so they should be actioned before the next refresh to avoid them being lost.
