Folks

We have been using NetSuite MRP for about 15 months now and it has been going well until a couple of weeks back.

We have a scheduled MRP run that runs overnite at 1am NZ time    This overnight  MRP run always completes normally, no reported errors.  I believe our NetSuite instance runs via an Australian data center which handles Australia / NZ  / possibly some of Asia as well.

We have approx 500 assemblies with demand (excluding phantoms) and approx 1100 inventory parts with demand. It’s a bit of data but nothing mind boggling.

We run MRP (Complete refresh option)  over a 450 day horizon  over 2 locations (one location only has 2 parts). Until recently NetSuite has performed flawlessly (over 12 months) and does the full MRP refresh  in a matter of minutes each time. (typically less than 5 minutes for a full MRP run)

We have a business need to do  extra ad hoc MRP runs in the daytime as we have some make to order products so when we load a big sale for those we want to get the demand in the system and any purchase orders placed the same day.

A  few weeks things changed and  we found that if an extra MRP run was done in the daytime   then it got to around 38% through the Material Requirements Planning step and just locks up (freezes) and stays that way all day.  A major downtime issue for planning and purchasing staff as a result.

This lockup happens currently like 90% of the time we do daily ad hoc MRP runs.

We logged a ticket through our software providers and they seemed to imply that the problem was ours due to data volume and that we should either reduce our date horizon or fragment our MRP run  to reduce the data volume.   Neither of these options was palatable as we have component parts with widely spread use and also some raw material leadtime that are up to 12 months long so we really do want to keep doing the one single MRP run with 450 day planning horizon

The latest response from NetSuite says:

There are currently no errors at the back end and as previously communicated, this might have something to do with the amount of data being processed by the system.

We have yet to receive an update from our QA engineers but rest assured any significant advise they will give will be communicated to you.

The 3 things that jump out at me are

1. This is a recent development, same volume of data / time horizon worked fine for > 12 months
2.  When the MRP run locks up it is always around the 38% completion point in the run – within a range of say 38.5 – 39.2%
3. The overnite run always works OK, so is the issue some  actually some data volume allocation issue ?

Anyone else experienced this MRP lock up problem before ?

It does my head in when it locks up as we are out of action for the rest of the day and we have lost lots of hours in recent time. I’m reluctant now to do any ad hoc MRP runs as if the system locks up then we lose too much time.

I found a planning error this morning and had to do an ad hoc MRP run and as a result our system has been locked up since 8am and I have 6 people who can’t do their jobs fully as a result.

Any advice / suggestions appreciated.

John

Christchurch NZ