Materials Requirement Planning - MRP

  

Categories: Accounting

You own a factory that makes chocolate chip cookies. Every day, when your employees arrive for their shifts, you have to have all the materials in place. You need enough sugar, vanilla, salt, brown sugar, chocolate chips, etc. for them to run the machines and make the cookies. Otherwise, if you don't have enough raw materials, the workers will just spend the day standing around, looking at their phones. Maybe at pictures of cookies.

The formal process of ensuring that workers have the materials they need is called material requirements planning. MRP is a method companies use to plan and schedule the delivery of the right materials, while still limiting unnecessary expenses, like spoilage.

In the old days, MRP involved a hurried guy with a clipboard. Nowadays, companies use specifically-designed software to optimize the process.

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Cost Accounting: What do you need to kno...1 Views

00:00

And finance Allah shmoop What do you need to know

00:04

about product costing In a nutshell Products there what companies

00:11

make and sell and well track and fix and upgrade

00:16

and lather Rinse Repeat until they make a lot of

00:19

profit or go bankrupt well especially if the product that

00:21

they make is shampoo Well the tracking and accounting for

00:25

products is actually strangely complex Why Well accountants have to

00:30

find ways to build clients right Yeah that's an accounting

00:34

joke Assorted But actually the tracking of products is in

00:37

theory a good way to optimize the way in which

00:39

managers run a business So products get looked at through

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a whole bunch of lenses like this one and this

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one and this one Weird products Weird filtered lenses So

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let's start by breaking up a product so that its

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production fits into a time schema We'LL think about all

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the units of shampoo for bald men that scalp and

01:00

shoulders makes in a quarter of a lot of units

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and gas Bald men shampoo too It's not just for

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you know the haired all right We'LL scalp and shoulders

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and makes a million bottles in those ninety one day's

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important point here Product costs are recognized not as the

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stuff is made but rather as expenses when they are

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sold So they all sit on the balance sheet as

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an asset usually at their cost or book value until

01:25

told otherwise those our product costs But then there are

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costs incurred keeping the home fires burning as it were

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you know making the shampoo But the workers in the

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factory keep being paid whether bottles are sold or not

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Same deal with the electricity and gas bills and insurance

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and rent and so on All those or costs incurred

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in that period and in parallel period costs are usually

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expensed in the period in which they were incurred like

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a quarter or a month or a year is a

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period to get a clearer picture of the meaning of

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measuring and assessing of all things product Divide that shampoo

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bottle into two components you know like that First comes

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the direct manufacturing costs of that bottle Stuff like the

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goop inside of it You know the bottle itself the

02:10

shrink wrapping and packaging for anti tampering security like it

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would not be cool for a prankster It's safe way

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to replace the shampoo in a bottle of shampoo for

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haired people with Nair So that's direct direct cost to

02:24

make the thing Then you have indirect costs which includes

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like well pretty much everything else Or at least all

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the other things that go into the process of making

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the shampoo You know from the capital originally spent like

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interest on it and now being depreciated on the giant

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twenty thousand gallons that oh gu to the commitments of

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paying rent on the buildings for years ahead and insurance

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and employee pension benefit things all indirect costs direct cost

02:53

break into a few subcategories Here is well so well

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let's just note um you have materials like plastic bottle

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goop inside shrink wrap safety rap thing cleverly called direct

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materials costs or raw uncooked materials for a manufacturing company

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that makes coffee mugs with swear words on them Well

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it'd be the mug itself with raw materials of clay

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and glaze and then the ink for the swears and

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then the daily cost of the robot Engraving them all

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raw materials and direct costs and you have to figure

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out how you want allocate cost of the kiln to

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drive that thing there That's probably a direct costs as

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well Appreciating the capital cost toe by that robot though

03:33

the swear word righty two thousand That would be an

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indirect costs Got it So if it was human and

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not a robot then direct labor would be a cost

03:41

of the human painting on you and someone that's direct

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labour And then you have the third component of direct

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product costs here which is just overhead like think mush

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pot for every other expense to be thrown into the

03:56

secretaries who take orders and manage the building Maintenance ops

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the janitors and of course yes the lawyers Don't forget

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the lawyers although we wish we could They're a part

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of what's called indirect labor in that they you know

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labour but only indirectly to do the most important part

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of what shareholders wanted to dio with a company to

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do anyway which is to produce mugs or shampoo or

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whatever a given company does for a living So we

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saw direct materials these things and of course there are

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indirect materials like lube for the robot and solvent to

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clean spilled clay and glaze off the floor and the

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monthly cleaning service for that Oh Gu And also in

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manufacturing overhead comes the depreciation of the cap ex or

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capital expenditures and the amortization of sales output Deals like

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those contracts on anything else They all go into the

04:43

mush pot so here's more vocab to throw it your

04:46

head as it relates to the cost of products or

04:48

product costing You have prime costs like no relation to

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the rib Prime means primary stuff you need to build

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units of your product It's not just the materials that

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go into the mugs or shampoo bottles or whatever's It's

05:01

also the labour behind it that assembled it ever so

05:05

lovingly ish So the term prime cost is usually attributed

05:09

to companies who make some things from nothing's like That

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shampoo maker takes eighteen parts lye soap dissolves It mixes

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it with waters from Nee Paul then ads fourteen units

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of whale blubber and four drops of chlorine which it

05:22

is carefully synthesized to be of jaws The right concentration

05:26

or density that is the shampoo maker makes the product

05:29

prime ingredients for primary costs But other manufacturers do more

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assembling then making like think about a carmaker getting great

05:37

tax benefits and anti protectionist breaks by assembling cars in

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the country in which they're being sold That companies selling

05:44

oh say Ford trucks in France Lew Ford might have

05:48

made their engine in Mexico then bought tires locally from

05:52

Michelin and then brought in windshield wiper seats and other

05:55

leather goods from Morocco and then the electric guidance system

05:59

from Israel and well the rest shipped in from the

06:01

U S Of a Well all the parts were made

06:04

They just needed labor to assemble them in France and

06:07

be all ready to drive on little tiny one D

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five hundred year old roads with bottles In that case

06:12

the manufacturing term for product cost really revolves around conversion

06:17

costs That is you're converting already assembled subsets of raw

06:20

materials into a finished good which people actually want Yes

06:24

they actually want these things So if these air manufacturing

06:27

costs and what are non manufacturing costs Well basically two

06:31

things the company has to be organized or administered So

06:34

there are secretaries and lawyers and CEOs and CFOs and

06:37

line managers and yes accountants They're all overhead They don't

06:40

actually make the product They just rule over people who

06:43

do and they get lumped as administrative costs They you

06:47

know administer So that's one category The other marketing Yeah

06:51

like how do you get stores to stock your shampoo

06:54

for bald men And how do you assess what color

06:57

bottle works best to sell at Christmas time And how

07:00

do you know if you should suggest a retail price

07:03

of seven ninety nine seven ninety five or just say

07:05

about eight bucks Yeah the marketing department deals with all

07:09

that and here's where it gets dicey Let's say you

07:12

sell five different types of shampoo Shampoo for bald men

07:15

shampoo for bald women Yes much smaller market shampoo for

07:18

the nether region And then of course shampoo for Democrats

07:21

in the Blue Bottle and shampoo for Republicans in the

07:24

Red One Yeah that's five products You spend one hundred

07:27

million dollars a year marketing them Well the division manager

07:30

of Shampoo for the Nether region just like all the

07:32

other managers gets paid on operating profits of her division

07:36

She feels she doesn't need marketing because everyone who wants

07:40

sf tnr yeah already knows about it and buys it

07:43

secretly Yeah they pay cash and quietly walk out of

07:46

the store Yet she gets charged a product cost of

07:50

one fifth of the marketing budget or twenty million dollars

07:53

that goes on her bottom line against her bottom line

07:55

So she gets paid a lot less in bonus money

07:58

then does the flagship brand shampoo for Bald Man which

08:00

really doesn't need the marketing spin because it's a very

08:03

competitive out there Well she might argue that the marketing

08:05

should be allocated according to the units sold of that

08:08

particular product or based on a brand Surveys toe why

08:12

people buy a given product But just dividing the marketing

08:15

spend in fifties and an equally apportioning it feels very

08:19

unfair to her right and make sense Well The company's

08:22

most senior management however wants this to be a team

08:25

company a team production a team vibe in its corporate

08:28

culture So it applies a kind of cost allocation socialism

08:33

to the big expenses They're not fair talked to a

08:36

bald guy or gal about fairness Yeah well what do 00:08:39.511 --> [endTime] you think Oh no

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