Component planning takes place in the Material Requirements Plan (MRP) module and the plans are checked against capacity in the Capacity Requirement Plan (CRP) module.

This tool enables you to schedule and issue orders for the items and for the work required to support the master schedule. You can use CRP to determine at a fairly precise level how this plan loads the resources you have at your site.

Component planning enables you to determine which work centers and components are used to meet the plan. The check is to determine whether the work centers have the capacity to meet the schedule.

Items that are not master scheduled are planned using MRP with master schedule as input. Master schedules generate demand for components. MRP uses this demand to schedule orders for components.

Planning and execution generally move down and to the right through the matrix shown here.

MRP is a time-phased priority planning system that calculates material requirements using:

MRP plans orders: what to order, when and how much. Supply is scheduled and rescheduled to meet changing demand and maintain valid due dates.

MRP and CRP deal with departments, work centers, and components.

Planners and shop floor personnel use MRP results to determine manufacturing schedules, which have the same time horizon as master schedules.