Material Requirements Planning

Material Requirements Planning (MRP) is a computerized system developed by Joseph Orlicky in the 1970s that calculates material requirements based on master production schedules and bill-of-materials data. MRP determines what materials to buy, how much to order, and when to order them to meet production demand while minimizing inventory carrying costs. It became a foundational technology for manufacturing planning and later evolved into manufacturing resource planning (MRP II) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.