MRP processing keys

NETCH, NETPL and NEUPL are three fundamentally different ways to schedule your MRP run:

• NETCH – Net Change Planning
• NETPL – Net Change Planning within Planning Horizon
• NEUPL – Regenerative Planning

MRP Processing Keys

I will elaborate on these three options and their workings:

SAP is keeping track of changes that are relevant for planning a material (like sales order entry, purchase order entry, stock release, etc.). A planning relevant change signals to MRP that the material should run in the next NETCH or NETPL MRP run. MRP will thus only process those materials that underwent some type of planning relevant change. This can decrease processing time of the MRP background run when compared to processing ALL materials.

The difference between NETCH and NETPL is the planning horizon. In NETPL, if a change occurs outside the planning horizon (e.g. a sales order is entered 2 months away and your planning horizon is 6 weeks), then the material is not included in MRP even though there is a change. Be careful with this, because that same sales order is not recognized as a new requirement when it will shift within the planning horizon as we move towards the future.

Regenerative planning (NEUPL) disregards the fact whether or not planning relevant changes were made to the material. It will process ALL materials (with an MRP relevant planning type in the material master’s MRP1 tab).

Another element worth mentioning is the processing indicator. You can use the processing indicator in the stock/requirement list or MRP list to indicate that you checked the material. You can use a filter in the collective access transaction MD06 so you only have to review unprocessed materials (the materials that you didn’t check yet).

MD06 - Processing Indicator

MD06 Filter Processing Key

Planning background MRP jobs

Background scheduling of MRP jobs is done through program RMMRP000 (SE38). This screen is similar to transaction MD01 that is used for foreground (on-line) processing. Alternatively to RMMRP000 you can schedule variants through transaction MDBT. I usually plan two MRP jobs for my customers:

1. Weekly MRP: MRP NEUPL on Monday morning: we start with a new week and all materials are processed. All processing indicators are reset.
2. Daily MRP: MRP NETCH runs from Tuesday to Friday, early in the morning, only materials that have undergone some type of planning relevant change are picked up for MRP, safely assuming that all other materials are still OK. The processing indicator of the materials in these runs are reset, the ones not included in MRP are untouched.

Note that in this MRP run setup there are two jobs: daily and weekly. This results in an MRP run on every day except Saturday and Sunday. Obviously if weekends are working days for your company’s planning department weekends needs to be included as well.

Also MRP runs in the morning and not before midnight. You want the stock date to be today’s date. Even though there is only five minutes difference between before and after midnight: yesterday’s stock date just looks as if you are using data that is not current.

I recommend staying away from NETPL. There is really no advantage using this procedure; only risk.

Kowboyz BV / CC BY-ND 3.0