Is The MRP Algorithm Fatally Flawed?

(Links updated Feb 24, 2010)

Robert Johnston, now at the University of Melbourne   holding the John Skarkey Chair of Information Systems and Organisation at the UCD School of Business in Ireland, did his PhD work at Monash University in Australia. His dissertation, “The Problem With Planning” presents a thought provoking thesis.

– Early robotics and computational intelligence models were built on a model which research at MIT debunked as unworkable in the 1980’s.

– The MRP algorithm uses the same model.

– Therefore, MRP is also unworkable.

Further, his dissertation goes on to postulate that the successful models currently being exploited by the latest research at MIT (which, by the way, are commercially exploited by the Roomba) share many similar characteristics with kanban systems.

I will extrapolate a bit and comment that kanban systems are a subset of a general shop floor information management model that is outlined in “Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System” by Spear and Bowen. Johnston’s work pre-dates Spear’s publication, so it is not referenced, but if you actually read Spear’s dissertation you can see the similarities in the details.

And yes, when I wrote to Dr. Johnston his first comment back was surprise that someone had actually read his dissertation. Take a look. Chapters 1-5 are mostly theoretical background and history. The interesting part starts at Chapter 6.