Total Inventory and Production Control with SapphireOne MRP
SapphireOne Material Requirements Planning (MRP) gives you complete visibility and control over your inventory and production processes. With built-in forecasting and historical analysis, MRP helps businesses control inventory levels, enhance production efficiency, reduce costs, and plan confidently for the future.
What Is Material Requirements Planning?
Material Requirements Planning (MRP), sometimes referred to as Material Resource Planning, is a production planning, scheduling, and inventory control system designed to improve productivity within manufacturing and distribution environments.
At its core, MRP is designed to answer three fundamental business questions:
- What is needed?
- How much is needed?
- When is it needed?
By answering these questions accurately, businesses can avoid overstocking, minimise shortages, and align production with demand.
How Material Requirements Planning Works
MRP works backwards from a production plan for finished goods. This plan is converted into detailed requirements for:
- Sub-assemblies
- Component parts
- Raw materials
All requirements are scheduled to ensure the final product can be delivered within the required timeframe.
Without proper resource planning, businesses often struggle with:
- Excess inventory holding costs
- Production delays
- Missed or unfulfilled customer orders
Effective MRP removes these inefficiencies by aligning inventory, production, and demand.
Components of SapphireOne Material Requirements Planning
SapphireOne’s Inventory Management module includes a fully integrated MRP feature that allows resource planning to be managed directly within the ERP system.
SapphireOne’s MRP functionality is built around two core capabilities:
- Historical Usage Analysis
- Track, adjust, and analyse historical inventory usage
- Review usage data across the past 2, 3, or 4 years
- Identify trends, seasonality, and anomalies in demand
- Forward Forecasting
- Forecast future material requirements up to 2.5 years ahead
- Calculations are driven by historical usage data
- Forecasts update dynamically as data is adjusted
Key Features of the SapphireOne MRP Forecasting Tool
The Forecasting tool allows businesses to model future inventory requirements with precision and flexibility.
Key features include:
- Forecast material requirements up to 2.5 years in advance
- Fully adjustable forecasting values that automatically recalculate when changed
- Ability to account for unexpected events by modifying forecast inputs
- Support for multiple planning variants, including:
- Minimum and maximum inventory levels
- Fixed Order Quantities (FOQ)
- Supplier lead times
- Editable forecast lines (highlighted in blue) for tailored planning
- One-click Save & Recalculate to generate updated forecasts
- Forecasting available for total inventory or individual inventory items
MRP Usage History Tool
The Usage History tool provides insight into past inventory behaviour and directly influences future forecasts.
Key capabilities include:
- Record and review historical usage for 2, 3, or 4 years
- Interactive usage graph that can be manually adjusted
- Blue data points can be moved to reflect corrected or exceptional historical periods
- Automatic recalculation of future forecasts based on adjusted historical data
- Analysis available for total inventory or specific inventory items
Benefits of the SapphireOne MRP Tool
Inventory Control
- Ensure materials are available when needed
- Track stock on hand accurately
- Minimise excess inventory
- Plan future material requirements with confidence
Cost Reduction
- Reduce holding and storage costs
- Improve purchasing efficiency
- Maintain a steady and predictable inventory flow
Enhanced Scheduling
- Allocate production time efficiently across products
- Achieve economic order quantities consistently
Production Optimisation
- Ensure the right materials are available in the right quantities at the right time
- Reduce waste and downtime
- Improve utilisation of equipment and labour
Improved Supplier Relationships
- Align demand planning with supplier capacity
- Improve transparency and communication
- Create more reliable purchasing and delivery schedules
Future Planning
- Use historical sales and usage data to support informed forecasting
- Save time, resources, and costs through better planning decisions
A step-by-step video walkthrough is available, demonstrating how to use the SapphireOne MRP tool and how it can improve inventory and production processes.
As always, if you have any questions about how our Inventory Management functionality and MRP feature can help your business, please do not hesitate to get in touch or book a demo with a member of our team. We’re always here to help!