Important!
The information contained in this section assumes you are familiar with the basics of navigating your Merlin system, adding and amending records, etc. as described in the Basics section of this manual.

The Main Screen

Note the colour coding.  Frequently used Buying office options (purple) are available from the Direct Access panel on the left of the screen, without clicking the Buying tab.

The Buying office in Merlin MRP Factory is a busy place!  Here you will find three distinctly different ways of purchasing materials, and this in addition to the Buy Kit option available at Job level in Shop Floor.

You can inspect your existing Purchase Orders by clicking the command button at the top of the Interactive column.

Routine Stock Control

At the top of the Reports column you will see Proposed Main Buy and Run Main Buy. Clearly, it is a good idea to run the proposed list first, to perform a sanity check before committing the purchases.

This routine can be run at any time to generate Purchase Orders that will procure all the materials you need at any given time to replenish stock items which have fallen below the Minimum Stock level and restore them to Maximum Stock Levels (where such levels have been set on the Resources File), after all Allocated materials and goods already on-order are taken into account.

Your routine stock control is as simple as that.  Print and check the proposed list, then Run Main Buy to generate Purchase orders.  Job done!

This forms the kernel of your basic stock control system, but is only one of the tools which Merlin places at your disposal (including Run MRP described below) for making sure you have the materials you need, when you need them.  It is important to have an overall strategy for using these tools, so please see Stock Control Options at the foot of this page.

The MRP Process

At the bottom of the Interactive column you will see the  Run MRP button.  This will invoke  the immensely powerful MRP Engine module which will scan optionally either a nominated Job Series (buying group) or All Unprocessed Jobs on the system, drilling down to find all of the subassemblies infinite levels deep, provide an option of reports scheduling subassembly needs, showing what is in already production and what needs to be built, and warning of any impossible deadlines.

Merlin will then offer to generate Works Orders for all subassembly shortages, and
Auto-Create Jobs to satisfy the requirement.  Auto-Created Jobs are "Authorised" (see Admin / Sales Orders & Jobs) so no manual intervention is necessary.

Then Merlin will proceed to analyse all of the materials requirements for all of these jobs, again offering comprehensive reports breaking-down the requirements job by job and part by part, warning of impossible deadlines.  It will then generate purchase orders to procure these materials, and produce Delivery Schedules for your suppliers, rewriting the Schedules table.

Please Note:  In the above purchasing routines, items with Stop Purchase checked on the Stock Record Card or the appropriate Supplier Record Card will be shown in the Proposed Purchases clearly marked with STOP!, but will not be included in the Purchase Orders.

Shopping List

This is the third method of raising Purchase Orders in the Buying office.  This is a very fast means of making ad hoc purchases by manually setting a Shopping List purchase quantity against each item you wish to purchase in this way.  (This can also be done on the Resource Record Card.)

You can inspect your Shopping List at any time by clicking the appropriate tab, and clicking the Print button will generate the Proposed Shopping List and generate the Purchase Orders.

Shopping List shows when a supplier or material is Stopped, but ignores this when generating the Purchase Orders.

Related Items

[Shopping List]     [Delivery Schedules]    [Goods In]    [Rejected Items]    [Run MRP]     [Stock Control Options]

Other Sections

[User Guide]    [OverView]   [Basics]    [Resources]    [The Market]    [Design]    [Job Tracking]    [Manufacturing]   [Admin]