Proposals for enhancing tactical planning in grocery retailing with S&OP

Abstract

Purpose -This paper explores tactical planning in grocery retailing and proposes how process and integration mechanisms from sales and operations planning (S&OP) can enhance retail tactical planning. Design/methodology/approach -This work follows an explorative design with case studies from the grocery retailing industry in Finland, Norway, and the UK. Findings -The tactical planning process focuses on demand management and securing product availability from suppliers in order to reach sales targets. Less attention is directed towards balancing supply and demand or towards providing a single plan to guide company operations. Planning appeared to be functionally oriented with limited coordination between functional plans, but it did include external integration that improved forecast accuracy.Research limitations/implications -The study involves grocery retailer cases with variable level of S&OP maturity. The propositions need to be investigated further through action research or additional case studies to confirm their validity. Practical implications -The study proposes a design of an S&OP process in retailing and propositions for improving tactical planning integration. Originality/value -The study complements research on retail tactical planning by taking planning process and integration viewpoints. The research suggests that retailers would benefit from a formal and company-wide S&OP process to unify different market-oriented plans to a single set of numbers, thus better balancing supply and demand without sacrificing the emphasis on demand planning.

Sales and Operations Planning: The effect of coordination mechanisms on supply chain performance

“… Product characteristics. S&OP is used widely across a wide of industries with highly diverse product characteristics including: product variety, shelf life and frequency of product launch (Ivert et al, 2015;Dreyer et al, 2018). The phenomenon of SKU (stock-keeping units) proliferation also increases the complexity and risks in S&OP.…”

“…However, past studies in S&OP generally do not investigate differences in S&OP performance across industries. Some are specific to industry sectors, such as retail (Harwell, 2006;Dreyer et al, 2018), telecommunications equipment (Hadaya and Cassivi, 2007) and food production (Ivert et al, 2015), while others have research subjects that span multiple industries (e.g. Jonsson et al, 2007, Nakano, 2009).…”

Enabling integrated business planning through big data analytics: a case study on sales and operations planning

“…S&OP implementation-related uncertainty and equivocality) and interdependence (i.e. cross-functionality related uncertainty and equivocality) of the task (Tushman and Nadler, 1978; Bensaou and Venkatraman, 1995; Grimson and Pyke, 2007; Dreyer et al , 2018). The S&OP implementation construct, which is considered to be the task, is adapted from Grimson and Pyke (2007) and Dreyer et al (2018).…”

Demand Forecasting model based on artificial neural networks for Passenger Transportation Projects

“…As noted by Vasconcelos et al (2019), passenger demand is one of the main risk factors in passenger transport infrastructure projects. According to Dreyer et al (2018), the demand forecast is recognized by companies as an important planning tool, at all organizational levels, ranging from operational to strategic planning. Xu, Chan and Zhang (2019) and Flyvbjerg (2013) emphasizes the importance of passenger demand forecasting to project managers and decision makers, as it influences capital investment costs (CAPEX) and operation and maintenance (OPEX) and risks of Operating income of the enterprise, i.e.…”