Chemicals · MRP
MRP for chemical manufacturers
Today
The schedule assumes material is available and the vessel is free, and both assumptions fail on the day, so a campaign slips and a customer is told late.
Generic MRP plans discrete units through work centres. Chemical production is campaigns, vessels, cleaning between incompatible products, variable yield and lot-controlled, shelf-life limited inputs.
With Worldover
Worldover MRP connects released formulas, lot availability and shelf life, supplier lead times and MOQs, vessel and reactor capacity, and cleaning and sequencing rules to the order book.
Campaigns are planned against real constraints, so promised dates hold and expensive changeovers are minimised.
USED BY 250+ INDUSTRY LEADERS
The problem
Why generic MRP failschemicals manufacturer teams.
Yield is treated as fixed
Actual yield varies by grade, batch size and equipment, so a plan built on a nominal figure under-orders material.
Sequencing rules live in people's heads
What can follow what without a full clean is operational knowledge that no generic planner holds.
Shelf life is ignored until it bites
Material bought to cover a campaign expires when the campaign moves, and the write-off is discovered at stock count.
A working day
Planning next month's campaigns
Three products share a vessel and one has a customer date that can't move.
Today: planning builds a sequence in a spreadsheet, then reworks it when procurement flags a nine-week lead time on a key raw material.
In Worldover: the plan shows material coverage, expiry, vessel availability and required cleans in one view.
The sequence that avoids two full cleans is proposed, with the material orders it requires.
When a supplier confirms late, the affected customer dates are flagged immediately rather than at dispatch.
How it runs
How MRP worksinside Worldover.
01
Requirements explode the real formula
Planning uses the released version, including intermediates made in-house.
02
Availability is lot-aware
Quarantine, retest dates and shelf life determine what can actually be used on the planned date.
03
Capacity includes vessels and cleaning
Equipment, changeover and compatibility rules shape the campaign, not just labour hours.
04
Exceptions surface early
Late supply, expiring stock and capacity clashes are raised as actions while there's still time to act.
What's in it
The detail behindMRP.
Manufacturing Execution System (MES)
Electronic batch records, dual signatures, QA release and full lot traceability.
Electronic batch records
Replace the paper batch record with records captured live across the manufacturing process.
Three-level order structure
Mixing, encapsulation and finished goods modelled as a linked order hierarchy, with material and lot flow between each level.
Dual-signature control
Performer and verifier electronic signatures against each recorded step, supporting 21 CFR Part 11 electronic signatures.
Multi-stage sampling and QA release
In-process sampling points and staged quality releases before a batch can progress.
Lot and batch traceability
Full lot traceability across every stage.
Incoming goods QA
Goods-in quality checks on receipt, with an internal lot ID assigned to every received material.
Demand Planning
Demand forecasting and sales velocity tracking feeding production planning.
Demand forecasting
Forecast from raw order data pulled through the Shopify and Fulfill APIs, with seasonality and trend analysis. Forecasts recalibrate as demand changes.
Sales velocity tracking
Sell-through by product, channel and region, replacing the manual demand work that drives stock-level and production inconsistency.
Production planning integration
AI-proposed manufacturing jobs from current inventory, incoming demand, safety stock and supplier lead times, surfaced for manual approval, then fed into production planning with automatic raw material ordering.
Production Planning
Production orders, scheduling, BOM explosion and AI-led capacity planning.
Production order management
Orders linked to formulations, BOMs and inventory, tracked through every manufacturing stage.
Scheduling and capacity planning
Schedule from a full resource map of machinery, labour, shifts and skill matrices, allocating machine slots, packing, filling and labour for maximum utilisation.
Labour costing and allocation
Cost labour against orders with configurable rate cards.
Bill of materials explosion
Explode BOMs from formulations to generate material requirements for each run.
PO management
Purchase orders linked to production requirements and supplier lead times.
AI-led automated production planning
Scheduling that optimises across machine throughput, staff capability, raw material lead times and job priorities, surfacing issues in real time with suggested fixes. Replaces the manual scheduling spreadsheet. Requires Inventory Management.
Inventory Management
Stock control, purchasing and supplier management in one place.
Inventory overview
A dashboard of stock levels for every item: raw materials, packaging and finished goods.
Stock and non-stock items
Separate items you always hold from items ordered for a specific job.
Request stock
Team members request stock against particular jobs.
PO management
End-to-end management of customer purchase orders.
Supplier order management
Supplier orders in one place, removing the email switching procurement relies on today.
Stock log audit
The audit trail underneath every stock calculation.
Warehouse Management
Locations, receiving, picking and dispatch with barcode scanning.
Location management
Zones, aisles, racks and bin locations with configurable hierarchies.
Receiving and putaway
Receive against purchase orders and assign putaway locations with barcode scanning.
Pick, pack and dispatch
Pick lists from production or customer orders, with pack confirmation and dispatch workflows.
Bin and location transfers
Stock movements between locations with a full audit trail.
Integration with Inventory
Natively linked to Inventory Management for real-time stock visibility.
The difference
Why the substance recordmakes the difference.
Planning a substance business means planning intermediates, not just finished goods. Because Worldover holds multi-level formulas and lot genealogy, a shortage on one raw material shows its effect on every intermediate, campaign and customer order downstream.
Better together
What changes when MRPshares a record with the rest of your setup.
Willow
What teams actually askonce the record is in one place.
- What is the cheapest campaign sequence next month that still hits the fixed customer date?
- Which raw materials expire before their planned campaign?
- If this delivery slips two weeks, which customer orders are at risk?
Willow doesn't replace expert judgment. It removes the searching, re-keying and chasing between the systems that hold your answers.
Request a demo
We'll walk through your current workflow, then show the same workflow running on one record.
Research
Compared with the alternatives
If you're still building a shortlist, these break the market down side by side.
- ShortlistBest MRP software for cosmetics and chemicals in 2026Planning and materials tools ranked for substance-based manufacturing.Read it
- ComparisonWorldover vs Dynamics 365 for chemicalsWhat Dynamics needs bolted on to handle substances.Read it
- ShortlistBest chemical ERPs in 2026Ranked shortlist of chemical ERPs, with pricing bands and who each one suits.Read it