Advanced Planning Systems for Supply Chain Transformation: A Study of Indian Manufacturing Industry

Abstract

Today, visibility in supply chain management (SCM) is valued as a critical business aspect for manufacturing industries to achieve their business goals through transparency. IT also helps organizations improve their operative proficiency with a data-driven approach. Since 1980, with the growing business volume and diversification in business offerings and product categories, companies are increasing their attention across the business as it is challenging to carry out anything excellently if an organization works in isolation (Lummus & Vokurka 1999). Organizations need a more agile and robust supply chain system that will be secure, scalable, and sustainable, to cater to the market demand quickly while keeping in mind the total cost of service and serviceability. Global business scenarios also push organizations to develop their business processes to meet offshore location requirements and define more systematic and effective ways to handle the movement of products and services. The global marketplace, changes in the worldwide economy, and technological revolution are leading markets to new dynamic levels of uncertainty, forcing companies to infuse agility and robustness in the entire supply chain, and encouraging them to think about digital supply chain footprints. occurred There is no denying that supply chains are still playing catch-up from disruptions that throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. Demand shocks to shortage of semiconductor chips, white goods, furniture, home, and office supplies, and grocery supplies sectors and various brands in every industry have felt the squeeze of balancing. Booming consumer demand with record slowdowns in coordination as such manufacturing continues to face rapid changes, adding monumental challenges in supply chain planning and execution (Sarkis, 2020). At the heart of the matter is a need to understand the various elements of the supply chain planning process so that manufacturing industries can proactively identify opportunities and constraints that can affect their operations. “The manufacturing industry is volatile and competitive, and organizations must be fast and agile to survive and thrive.

S&OP is a planned approach to identify the gap between demand and supply, and to provide best fit scenarios for the execution of a plan for delivery of products; it is aligned with cost and serviceability to fulfil the demand, so that organizations achieve their goals by aligning their cross-functional objectives (Wallace, 2006). Earlier, the S&OP process was worked out to integrate various functions of the organization, and to create a standard set of goals; in present day scenarios, the role of S&OP has changed due to globalization and global availability of products that can be delivered at the right time at the right cost, for facilitating specific significant tasks to be performed by the S&OP team, while keeping in mind forward and backward integration with various cross-functional teams. Further, some existing researches have explored the complexities of requirements in an APS. How S&OP aims to resolve the complexities in the supply chain planning affects the ability of an APS. Therefore, this study focuses on exploring the role and coordination of SCI and S&OP in APS for achieving performance. Although the criticality of S&OP is theorized, numerous studies have still focused on separate processes such as demand forecasting, production planning, and inventory control, without studying the interaction effect of the cross-functional department and inter-firm collaboration (Grimson & Pyke, 2007; Tuomikangas & Kaipia, 2014). Though the current literature addresses inter and intra firm affiliation, more research is required to know more about further developments, and to understand the breadth and complexity of SCI and its subsequent impact on performance (Frankel & Mollenkopf, 2015; Swink & Schoenherr, 2015). This study proposes to discover the outcome of APS in terms of SCI and S&OP to find out if it is possible to improve the operational performance by integrating the entire value flow. Supply Chain (SC) technology has increased the focus of practitioners to integrate partners through enterprise applications to streamline SC process. Access to data, i.e., demand data, trend, etc. is real-time and synchronized, and it improves the flexibility of the organization. In addition to the interlinking department thorough ERP, IT has strengthened the capability of an organization through data analytics (supply chain integration, planning, and analytics - advanced planning system). This paper has reviewed 100+ articles published in the supply chain area and used the systematic method for studying existing research. The paper describes dimensions of integration and the outcome of the S&OP process, which further leads to improved performance. The paper is initiated to answer the question of the needs of supply chain integration and advanced planning system. It further adds the integrative perspective to enable S&OP process at different domains of the supply chain, which lead the supply chain to IT-enabled advanced planning system.