Points Of View - Publications by Marris Consulting

The future of MRP : Demand-Driven MRP (DDMRP)

To cope with increasing complexity and uncertainty supply chains are facing today, "Demand-Driven Material Requirement Planning" (DDMRP) offers an alternative that meets modern expectations, to the classic "Material Requirement Planning" (MRP), which is largely implemented by organizations for more than 40 years. This methodology has already proven its efficiency by yielding in certain cases remarkable results (data from Demand Driven Insitute) such as an increase in service rate by 100%, a decrease in leadtimes by 80% etc.

Maintenance Sub-Contracting

A vast majority of industries face a dilemma when it comes to take maintenance-related decisions: should one hire full-time staff or is it better to outsource machine maintenance? Maintenance sub-contracting could decrease labour costs but contractors will encounter problems such as higher exposure to risks for external technicians, "memory loss" of their own facilities or even a globally unsatisfactory maintenance productivity. Trade-offs are not always easy to find...

Working Capital Requirement Minimization

Working Capital Requirement (WCR) includes trade receivables, trade payables and all stocks and work-in-progress (WIP). By optimizing these three factors, it is possible to generate increased cash flow. While the management of the two  first component implies (sometimes difficult) negociations with a third party, the management of stocks and WIP, which are physical components, does not depend on the outside world. Although the level of difficulty of implementation can be great, reducing stocks and WIP enables the organization to obtain higher industrial performance and competitiveness (shorter leadtimes, improvement in product quality) in addition to increased cash flows.

Managerial Efficiency

To meet executive management's high ambitions, it is crucial for a company to get clear engagement and alignment of its manager. In fact, the success of an organization depends essentially on its ability to adapt quickly and to mobilize in a very short term it resources around critical challenges. However, the phenomenon of demobilization of managers is more and more frequent and it is often accompanied by a confidence and credibility loss from their teams. It is therefore vital for any society to spot right away abnormalities in managerial behaviours or mis-alignment of objectives from different stakeholders (executives, managers, collaborators) and to bring appropriate changes.