What We’ll Unpack in This Article (TL;TD)
If your business operates across multiple sites, assembles or manufactures products, or has complex inventory flows, basic ERPs and warehouse management tools might fall short. Instead, there’s another option: material requirements planning (MRP) software. This inventory tool helps businesses determine how much raw material they will need to meet demand, and manage the production process.
MRP software has features such as:
- Multi-location support, which gives you visibility and control across every facility – warehouses, production sites, and distribution centers.
- Inter-site features, such as transfers, allocations, & replenishment rules
- Lead time, supplier, & production scheduling across sites.
- Unified data/integration across systems, to prevent silos and duplicate work.
This article dives into MRP software, and helps you determine if it’s right to adopt for your multi-site inventory-based business.
If your business operates across multiple sites, assembles or manufactures products, or has complex inventory flows, you’re not just dealing with one warehouse: you’re managing a network. This means you need smart coordination and excellent visibility between demand, supply, scheduling, and transfers. While basic ERPs and generic warehouse management tools are a common solution, they typically fall short when it comes to certain aspects of manufacturing. Instead, there’s another option: material requirements planning (MRP) software.
Why might some businesses benefit from a MRP tool? These systems have features which analyze data (such as demand forecasts), and determine which components or raw materials are required to meet demand. While it might be fairly straightforward to do these calculations when you have one site, it becomes far more challenging across multiple locations, or if your business deals with semi-finished goods or transfers between sites.
This article dives into MRP software, and helps you determine if it’s right to adopt for your multi-site inventory-based business.
What is MRP Software?
MRP software is a demand planning tool which helps businesses determine how much raw material they will need, and manage the production process. At its core, it answers three key questions for your business:
1. What do we need to make or buy to meet our demand forecasts?
MRPs take your supply chain data (like demand forecasts and open orders) and break it down through your Bill of Materials (BOM) to determine what’s needed to meet future demand.
2. How much do we need?
Then, it calculates the quantities of each item you’ll need – factoring in on-hand inventory, existing purchase orders, and any scheduled production. It’s crucial to accurately pinpoint this number: according to Deloitte, increased raw material costs are one of the top challenges manufacturers face.
3. When do we need it?
MRPs use lead times and production schedules to create time-phased recommendations: when to start production runs, issue purchase orders, or transfer materials between sites. Further data from Deloitte shows that the average delivery time for raw materials is 81 days – meaning businesses need to have excellent foresight in order to prevent backlogs and stockouts.
Ultimately, this makes MRP software highly useful for understanding:
- When to buy raw materials or components.
- When to produce assemblies or finished goods.
- When to transfer stock between locations.
- How much to order or produce to meet upcoming demand.
MRP vs. ERP vs. Inventory Planning Tools
MRP software sits among other common supply chain solutions, and is often confused for other systems, especially enterprise resource planning (ERP) tools.
Here’s the distinction:
- ERP systems manage broad business processes such as finance, HR, accounting, orders, and operations, but tend to be shallow in areas like forecasting abilities and inventory logic.
- MRP systems specialize in production and materials planning, using BOMs and time-phased logic to ensure every component is available when needed.
- Inventory planning tools focus on pre-warehouse optimization: forecasting demand, setting safety stock levels, managing lead times, and balancing inventory across sites before production or replenishment even starts.
What Features Does MRP Software Have?
To determine if MRP software is right for your business, it’s important to understand what this tool actually does. Here are key capabilities of MRP software, and how you should assess if a tool actually has them:
1. Multi-location support
Why it matters: You need visibility and control across every facility – warehouses, production sites, and distribution centers. Without it, you’ll end up with isolated data and disconnected plans.
What to check: Can the software define multiple sites or warehouses, transfer stock between them, and show inventory both by site and in total?
2. Inter-site transfers, allocations, & replenishment rules
Why it matters: To optimize inventory, you must be able to move stock between sites, balance supply and demand, and prevent inventory imbalances (such as an overstock in one location while another runs short).
What to check: Does the system support automated replenishment between sites? Can you define transfer rules, such as which locations can supply others with inventory, and when?
3. Visibility & inventory status across sites
Why it matters: Inaccurate or delayed visibility across all sites is one of the fastest ways to derail multi-site operations.
What to check: Are dashboards available that display site-by-site stock, in-transit quantities, and committed or reserved inventory in real time?
4. Bill of Materials (BOM) / production planning
Why it matters: For manufacturers or assemblers, the MRP must manage multi-level BOMs and coordinate production plans across sites.
What to check: Does it handle work orders, semi-finished goods transfers, and cross-site production dependencies?
5. Lead time, supplier, & production scheduling across sites
Why it matters: Not every site operates the same – lead times, supplier relationships, and capacities vary.
What to check: Can you define different lead times per site or per supplier, and does the system account for that in its planning logic?
6. Unified data/integration across systems
Why it matters: Multi-site planning often means connecting to multiple ERPs, warehouse systems, or external data sources. Good integration prevents silos and duplicate work.
What to check: Does the MRP offer APIs or connectors to your ERP and WMS? Can it synchronize and aggregate distributed data?
7. Scalability & configurability
Why it matters: As your network grows, your planning tool should scale with you – across sites, SKUs, and transactions – without losing speed or usability.
What to check: How many sites and users can it support? Are configuration options flexible, and what are the licensing or maintenance costs as you expand?
8. User roles, site-based permissions, & workflows
Why it matters: Each site may need local control and autonomy, but you also need centralized oversight.
What to check: Can you set up users who only see and manage their own site, while giving corporate users a full-network view?
Is MRP Software Right for My Business?
Not every growing business needs a full-blown MRP system, but some absolutely do. Here are some ways you can tell if yours does – or doesn’t.
- MRPs might be a right fit if you manage semi-finished goods or work-in-progress materials that move between sites. Alternatively, if you coordinate across facilities, or need to understand how inventory interacts across your network.
- You might not need MRP software if you’re primarily distributing finished goods – not building or assembling them. The manufacturing logic that comes with MRP might be too much.
When it comes to getting the most out an MRP, remember that:
- Implementation matters: Successful multi-site MRP implementation requires excellent data (like site definitions, inventory flows, lead times, and transfer rules). You’ll also need to map out how stock moves between sites, how site inventory is valued, and how you’ll handle site-to-site transfers.
- Cost and complexity are relevant: Don’t overlook the costs and complexity of rolling out an MRP across multiple sites. Data migration, training, and change management will be magnified. Make sure your org really needs an MRP before deciding to deploy.
- A phased approach can help: A smart MRP rollout strategy can make all the difference in your outcomes. For example, begin with a single pilot site to define your site-to-site transfer logic and validate planning accuracy. Then, expand to others.
Choose Tools that Give You the Right Level of Planning Power
Multi-site operations call for more than ERPs, legacy tools, or siloed systems: they require visibility, structure, and coordination across every part of your network. For businesses with manufacturing, assembly, or complex site-to-site inventory flows, a multi-site MRP system can be a game-changer. Here at StockIQ, we offer a multi-site MRP solution that can help you more effectively track and manage raw materials, completed inventory, and more.
Contact us today or request a StockIQ demo. to learn more about our comprehensive inventory management solutions.