Hello,
 
I think our process of working through the MRP is slow and inefficient.  Each week we are running an order action report through the end of that week.  Baseed on L/T anything we need to order should appear, and it does.  What purchasing does then is prints a Print Material Requirements page for every R - type part number.  Most of the time, the last PO info and mfgrs does not appear.  The last PO was marked as a purchased PO and not a service type.  Since the info is not displayed purchasing writes out the last few purchases, where it came from, mfgr part numbers, et al.  The writing of these sheets extremely time consuming.   We generally send out RFQ's to three vendors to check stock and pricing.  The RFQ's are reviewed then sent out.  That covers about 45% of the order action report.  Another 30% are placed to online vendors that ship out same day.  The remainder is more custom parts and purchased through a ton of different vendors.  These are usually marked with the vendor code to ease that a bit.  The problem is that this is very time consuming.  Parts that were ordered from one vendor may go to another vendor the next time or the online vendors.  Order action reports generally run 3-5 pages a week and it takes 2 people 1 week to get through it!  I just can't believe that this is the most efficient way of doing this, paper and time wise.  We are a contract manufacturer so what we're buying is based on our customers.  Holding inventory we don't need for orders several months in the future is not practical.  We already make use of reorder levels and quanitities, STD packaging and vendor codes for parts which are exclusive.  Anybody with any thoughts on how we can work to minimize the time?
 
Thanks
 
Steve