What is the DDMRP (Demand Driven MRP) methodology?

DDMRP (Demand Driven Material Requirements Planning) is a planning methodology that decouples the Supply Chain with strategic buffers and triggers replenishment from actual consumption rather than the forecast. Buffers are positioned at decoupling points (long-lead items, common components, finished goods exposed to volatility) and sized in three color-coded zones (green, yellow, red) using category-level heuristics for variability and lead time.

For most mid-market manufacturers, the productive question is not DDMRP versus classic MRP. It is whether buffers should be sized by category-level rules or by per-SKU probabilistic distributions. Flowlity replaces heuristic factors with full demand distributions learned per SKU, so safety buffers adapt to each item's actual risk profile rather than to a fixed category assumption. See the full comparison in our guide on DDMRP, MRP and probabilistic AI compared.