Explanation
Material requirements planning (MRP) is a process that calculates the net requirements and generates planned orders or purchase requisitions for materials based on various factors, such as demand, supply, lead time, lot size, safety stock, etc. To carry out MRP for a plant, some prerequisites are needed. Two of them are:
Maintain MRP data in the material master record for the materials to be planned automatically: This prerequisite is necessary, as the MRP data contains the parameters that control how the system plans the material, such as MRP type, MRP group, MRP controller, lot size, procurement type, special procurement, etc. Without these parameters, the system cannot determine the optimal quantity and timing of the material requirements.
Maintain plant parameters for the corresponding plant in Customizing: This prerequisite is necessary, as the plant parameters define the global settings that apply to all materials in the plant, such as planning horizon, planning calendar, opening period, scheduling margin key, etc. These settings influence how the system calculates the dates and quantities of the planned orders or purchase requisitions.