Operations Management - Aggregate Planning Assignment

Operations Management - Aggregate Planning - Assignment Example Disaggregation refers to the process of breaking down the contents of the aggregate plan into particular product requirements to determine the inventory requirements, labor requirement, and materials (Reid, 2002). The inputs of the master schedule are forecast demand; inventory costs, production costs, inventory levels, lot size, customer orders, capacity, supply, and production lead time. On the other hand, the outputs of the master schedule are projected available balance, staffing levels, amounts to be produced and quantity available that is promised (Reid, 2002). 2 MRP, which is the acronym for Materials Requirements Planning is regarded as an inventory control and production planning system that is mainly used to manage the manufacturing processes. It acts as a bridge between both production and master planning. The MRP inputs are a single or a multi-level bill of materials as well as the quantity of all the final products to be produced, which are derived from the sales orders or the sales projections. The outputs for MRP are the recommended production schedule and the recommended purchasing schedule (Reid, 2002). The MRP process is quite extensive and it passes through a number of stages in order to manage the manufacturing processes via the inventory control and production planning system. Starting with the end items, the first step is to establish all the gross requirements needed. Secondly, the net requirements are determined by subtracting both the receipts as well as the projected hand inventory from gross requirements. The third step is to time phase all the net requirements. Finally, the last step is to determine the order releases that are planned (Reid, 2002). Below is an example of a table illustrating the MRP process 3 The main goals of JIT are to have a balance rapid flow. The supporting goals are to make the system to be flexible, to eliminate waste particularly the excess inventory and to eliminate disruptions.