Adaptive Planning of Supply Chains

Abstract

It is a mistake to try to look too far ahead. The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time. Winston Churchill 11.1 Planning Planning, in the broad sense, is a purposeful, organized and continuous process including the synthesis of SC structures and elements, the analysis of their current state and interaction, the forecasting of their development for some period, the forming of mission-oriented programmes and schedules, and the development of SC SDC programmes for the transition to a required (optimal) structural macro-state. Planning, as a phase of decision-making, has several peculiarities: • Planning is a preliminary design of the organization design and functioning mechanism providing goal achievement by a given time. • The result of planning is a system of interrelated distributed time-phased decisions , while the function of planning is directly connected to the function of the regulation control, since designing and keeping programme trajectories use common resources. • The process of planning permanently approaches the end but never reaches it for two reasons: first, revising decisions lasts until concrete actions are performed ; second, the system and the environment can change during the planning process; therefore, it is necessary to correct plans periodically. • Planning is aimed at the prevention of erroneous operations and at a decrease in unimproved opportunities. The main requirements for a plan are as follows: • analysability (the plan execution should be subject to comprehensive analysis); • controllability (the plan execution should be subject to control); • adaptability (the plan should be able to be adapted in the planned and unplanned modes); • goal approachability (the plan should ensure the fulfilment of management goals); and • synchronizability (the plan should be coordinated in the horizontal mode under the SC partners and in the hierarchical mode with the plans of superordinated and underordinated levels).