Adaptive Sales & Operations Planning: Innovative Concept for Manufacturing Collaborative Decisions?

Abstract

By definition, Supply Chain Management includes a huge number of collaborative decision processes. In a manufacturing environment, the Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) process is often used to support strategic and tactical decisions such as recruitment, investment on machines or subcontracting. S&OP was invented in the eighties when collaboration issues between and within companies were radically different from what obtains today. Many rules and opportunities that are important for manufacturing collaborative decisions have changed but not in this process. Recently, the Demand Driven Institute has developed the Demand Driven Adaptive Enterprise system that includes an innovative process called Adaptive S&OP. The purpose of this paper is to develop a structured comparison between the traditional S&OP and the new Adaptive S&OP, to objectively characterize their differences, and to highlight points of vigilance regarding future Adaptive S&OP implementations. Based on this analysis, some suggestions for future research works are made.