Integrated material requirements/cost planning

This article presents an extension of the traditional material requirements planning format to include standard cost accounting flows. This integrated methodology, known as material requirements/cost planning (MRCP), provides a valuable pedagogical foundation for teaching business process integration between physical production activities and cost accounting. MRCP helps operations management students' analyse the effects of operations policy (lead times, lot sizes, etc.) on the financial performance of an enterprise. In enterprise resource planning (ERP) courses, MRCP provides clarity to transactions performed by complex ERP software.