Material Requirements Planning: Planning Transfers in MRP

In your production environment, items may be stored in multiple warehouses, such as when items are produced in one warehouse but stored and shipped in another warehouse. In this case, you may want the system to create planned orders for the transfer of items during material requirements planning (MRP). In Acumatica ERP Manufacturing Edition, the system creates planned orders for available item transfers during MRP if proper settings have been specified, as described in MRP Configuration: General Information.

In the following sections, you will read about planned orders for transfers that the system creates during MRP.

Planned Orders for Transfers

The system generates a planned transfer order for an item during MRP when both of the following are true:

  • The available item quantity in the warehouse specified in a demand document is insufficient to meet the demand
  • The item can be transferred from a different (transfer) warehouse according to the item settings. That is, Transfer is specified in the Replenishment Source box of the Replenishment tab on the Item Warehouse Details (IN204500) form for the combination of the item and the transfer warehouse

For a planned transfer order, the system creates the following records on the MRP Display (AM400000) form:

  • The demand document (such as a sales order) that contains the item. This record has the Transfer source and the transfer warehouse specified.
  • The planned transfer order itself. This record has the Planned Transfer Demand type.

Suppose that your organization assembles juicers and has warehouses in New York, Ohio, and New Jersey. In the New York warehouse, which is a sales center, juicers are shipped to customers. In the Ohio warehouse, which is a production center, the juicers are assembled and stored. When the juicers are out of stock in the New York warehouse, they are produced in the Ohio warehouse and transferred from this warehouse. In the New Jersey warehouse, the purchased materials for the juicers are received from vendors and stored. If any materials are out of stock in the Ohio warehouse, they are transferred from the New Jersey warehouse.

Further suppose that in Acumatica ERP Manufacturing Edition, on the Item Warehouse Details form, the replenishment source of the juicers in the New York warehouse has been set as Transfer, and the Ohio warehouse has been specified as the replenishment warehouse. Also, the replenishment source for materials in the Ohio warehouse has been set as Transfer, and the New Jersey warehouse has been specified as the replenishment warehouse. Material requirements planning is automatically run every night, and a planning engineer analyzes demand and supply for juicers based on the MRP results.

Now suppose that one of your customers would like to buy 10 juicers for its new restaurants. A sales manager has created a sales order for the juicers. Further suppose that you have three juicers in the New York warehouse and five juicers in the Ohio warehouse. To meet the customer's demand, you need to produce two juicers, but the materials are out of stock in the Ohio warehouse and must be transferred from the New Jersey warehouse.

When the planning engineer analyzes the MRP results, the engineer sees the following supply records related to the sales order:

  • A planned production order to produce two juicers in the Ohio warehouse
  • A planned transfer order to transfer materials for two juicers from the New Jersey warehouse to the Ohio warehouse
  • A planned transfer order to transfer seven juicers from the Ohio warehouse to the New York warehouse

Calculation of an Action Date for Planned Transfer Orders

If the transfer lead time between the warehouse selected in a demand document and the transfer warehouse has been specified during the system configuration, then the system subtracts the transfer lead time from the requested date in the demand document when calculating the action date for the planned transfer order. For example, suppose that transferring of items between warehouses takes two days. If a sales order has a requested date of January 30, then the action date for the planned transfer order is January 28.

Tip: You can specify the transfer lead time between warehouses on the Manufacturing tab of the Warehouses (IN204000) form. You can also override this time on the Manufacturing tab of the Item Warehouse Details (IN204500) form for a particular item.

Creation of a Transfer Order Based on Planned Orders

If you decide to transfer items according to the suggested documents resulting from the MRP process, on the MRP Display (AM400000) form, you select the needed records in the table and click Transfer on the form toolbar. The system creates a transfer order on the Sales Orders (SO301000) form with a number of lines on the Details tab that is equal to the number of the selected records and a Ship On date for each line that is the same as the action date of each planned transfer order that you selected.

Tip: You can create a transfer order for a planned record of any type.