Material Demand Forecasting: An ERP System Perspective

Abstract

This paper investigates various problems associated with the parameter specification for material requirements planning (MRP) in a typical ERP system. The choice of a suitable MRP procedure and its parameters can reduce excessive quantities of materials and, consequently, cost. The proposed approach is dedicated for MRP procedure based on the forecasting of material demand and inventory that can be obtained with the use of techniques for nonlinear function identification, such as fuzzy-neural system and neural networks. An example is presented which compares the different forecasting models for material demand and inventory.