A sales and operations planning application in the Brazilian subsidiary of a multinational chemical company

Abstract

Goal: the goal of this paper is to investigate how Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) is conducted in the Brazilian subsidiary of a global corporation of the chemical industry that manufactures and commercializes a variety of hygiene and cleaning consumer products.
 Design/Methodology/Approach: the case study approach was adopted. Data was gathered during four months by means of visits to the organization for direct observation, interviews with key executives, and internal and public documents, guaranteeing data triangulation. A well-known framework from the literature is applied to analyze the S&OP practices performed by the organization.
 Results: Findings contribute to aid in the understanding of the S&OP process. The case study indicates that S&OP has been a central process to organize and to align the enterprise’s efforts and deliver its business objectives.
 Limitations of the investigation: the research is conducted within one single company, a Brazilian subsidiary of a multinational chemical corporation, which limits the generalization of the findings.
 Practical implications: The research findings enhance the knowledge about S&OP providing practitioners with valuable information to understand better its phenomenon, such as how the process is performed, and the best practices and benefits.
 Originality/Value: S&OP has been an object of interest of scholars and practitioners for decades. However, the process is far from being completely understood and there is a call for more empirical studies. Thus the academic literature can benefit from this in-depth research that sheds light on an S&OP industry application.

SALES & OPERATIONS PLANNING: Case study on the Engineer-To-Order production model in the entertainment industry

“…Thomé et al's (2012) S&OP framework was chosen to support the case study development and to characterize the analyzed process. According to Seeling et al (2019), besides being largely adopted in the literature to analyze S&OP operations, as well as developing new frameworks, its main building blocks offer an important approach to conduct a structured analysis of case studies. From this characterization, it was possible to observe where the theoretical models apply and where there is a particularity in the context of the industry with ETO production.…”

“…This structure captures the main elements of S&OP (Kjellsdotter Ivert et al, 2015a) and is considered generic, as it offers a complete overview of the process (Noroozi and Wikner, 2017). This study was later referred to by several authors, such as Danese et al (2017), who evaluated the managing evolutionary paths in S&OP, Goh and Eldridge (2015), who analyzed new product introduction and supplier integration in the S&OP of two companies in Asia, Kristensen and Jonsson (2018), who did a systematic literature review on context-based S&OP, Pedroso et al (2016), who developed a multiple case study, Pedroso et al (2017), who offers a model for S&OP maturity, Seeling et al (2019) and Seeling et al (2020), who presents a case studies in Latin America, and Vereecke et al (2018), who assesses maturity in demand planning. There was also the influence of the different frameworks developed, such as those by Tuomikangas and Kaipia (2014), which assesses the coordination of S&OP, by Hulthén et al (2016) looking at the effectiveness and efficiency of S&OP, by Thomé et al (2012) and Hollmann et al (2015) with a focus on collaborative planning, forecasting and replenishment, by Kjellsdotter Ivert et al (2015a) who analyzes the complexity of the planning environment, by Noroozi and Wikner (2017) with a focus on supply chain integration, and Kristensen and Jonsson (2018) analyzing context-based S&OP.…”

“…The framework building blocks are context, inputs, structure and processes, and outcomes and results. Situated at the tactical level, this framework integrates long-term business and corporate strategic plans with short-term operations (Seeling et al, 2019). Through this study, Thomé et al (2012) ascertained that the S&OP process varies according to the industry context and the company's production strategies and requires having as inputs the different plans and the main operational and financial restrictions.…”

“…The literature highlights significant benefits of its application in companies, such as improvement in the accuracy of forecasts and the service level (Wagner et al, 2014), reduction in the stock level (Goh and Eldridge, 2015;Wagner et al, 2014) and improving the flow of information between demand and supply (Oliva and Watson, 2011). The academic literature presents good examples, however, empirical studies on S&OP are still lacking opening avenues for research research (Goh and Eldridge, 2015;Grimson and Pyke, 2007;Seeling et al, 2019;Thomé et al, 2012). According to Pedroso et al (2016), the literature lacks a complete characterization of the process based on empirical research.…”

Usage of Information Technology and Business Analytics within Sales and Operations Planning: A Systematic Literature Review

“…It thereby provides a platform for horizontal and vertical integration of information that can lever the tactical decision-making process. When applied successfully, S&OP can improve the organization's business performance (Seeling et al 2019). The application of analytics is not a new phenomenon and operations management has been around for several years in the context of supply chains (Souza, 2014) and with it also analytical approaches towards S&OP (e.g.…”