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This paper investigates the specific planning environment of an automotive part manufacturer and characterizes this environment based on variables regarding the product, its demand and the manufacturing process. The fit of different planning methods, namely material requirements planning, reorder point, cyclic planning, kanban, and heijunka to this specific planning environment is analyzed and evaluated by exploratory research. The results show that different product characteristics make it hard to apply a single planning method. None of the investigated methods show the ability to cover the complex requirements of a combined planning environment of two partly divergent product types with a deep value chain.