A Material Requirement specifies a raw material that is needed to perform an Operation.  Material Requirements can be specified as Constraints to prevent the Activities that require the material from scheduling to start before the material is expected to be available.

Material Constraint Types

Each Operation of a Manufacturing Order can have any number of Material Requirements specified.  Each Material Requirement can have one of three Constraint Types:

1. Non-Constraint:  This means the Material Requirement is informational only and will have no effect on the scheduling process.
2. Constraint:  This means the Material Requirement can constrain the Operation – preventing it from starting until the material will be available.  The date when the material is considered available is the earlier of (now plus the material’s Lead Time) and (the Material Requirement Available Date).
3. Confirmed Constraint:  This means the Material Requirement can constrain the Operation and that its Available Date is a firm constraint.  The date when the material is considered available is the Material Requirement’s Available Date.

All scheduling processes (Optimize, Move, Compress, etc.) will takes these Material constraints into account.

Material bottlenecks can be seen using the color code in the Gantt or on the Material Requirements Report.  This report can also be used to send material planning information to a material planner to expedite or de-expedite materials.