A review of techniques for buffering against uncertainty with MRP systems

Material requirements planning (MRP) is regarded as one of the most widely used systems for production planning and control in industry. In theory, the logic of MRP would preclude the use of buffering. In reality, uncertainty exists in the production system in various stages. Buffering is a primary means of protecting against degradation of performance due to the uncertainty. In this paper we review the literature for techniques and methodologies suggested to deal with the uncertainty. It is noted that no integrated or general methodologies exist to deal with this problem and several gaps still exist in approaches to deal with the uncertainty. Another shortcoming of previous work has been the limited amount of realism in the models and approaches as is the failure to account for the interactions between MRP and other areas of the planning and control system. Further research in this area is called for.