Materials requirement planning with the use of activity based costing

One of the rationalization areas is the material supply process. New tasks of material supply are: integration of supply with the operation of the entire system, especially at the product design stage, effective use of material resources, reduction of the level of supply costs from the point of view of production costs. In the conditions of unit and small batch production the materials requirement needs to be carefully planned and optimized due to the use of many different kinds, types and sizes of materials and dynamic changes of demand over time. In this situation there are needed tools enabling the measurement of production costs for particular tasks on the basis of currently realized processes. One of these tools is activity based costing which is a groundwork for decision making process in the material supply area. Basing on activity based costing, a model of materials requirements planning was developed, which considers minimizing the number of different kinds and sizes of materials by using alternative materials and, consequently, lowering production costs.