Sales and operations planning: responding to the needs of industrial food producers

Linea Kjellsdotter Iverta*, Iskra Dukovska-Popovskab, Riikka Kaipiac,

Anna Fredrikssona, Heidi Carin Dreyerd, Mats I. Johanssona,

Lukas Chabadad, Cecilie Maria Damgaardb and Nina Tuomikangasc

aDivision of Logistics and Transportation, Dept of Technology Management & Economics, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden;

bCentre for Logistics, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark;

cDepartment of Industrial Engineering and Management, Aalto University School of Science, Helsinki, Finland;

dDepartment of Production and Quality Engineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway

(Received 1 July 2013; accepted 13 February 2014)

MRPII 35

This paper investigates sales and operations planning (S&OP) at four Scandinavian industrial food producers in order to explore how the use of S&OP might help leaders to deal with the challenges set by the planning environment.

Variables connected to the product and market, e.g. frequency of new product development, customer service levels and supply uncertainty, were identified as particularly critical for the S&OP process.

It was found that there is great potential for S&OP in the food industry, foremost to cope with the imbalances between demand and supply and to create prerequisites for a stable production process.

Keywords: sales and operations planning; food industry; planning environment