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Sales and Operations Planning: Major obstacles faced by complex manufacturing organizations in operationalizing a standard level process

In general, literature is unanimous in concluding that Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) is superior to traditional decoupled planning. But even though the concept and potential benefits of S&OP is easy to comprehend, the process has proven to be difficult for organizations to operationalize in reality. Thus, the objective of this research was to investigate what major obstacles complex manufacturing organizations face while striving to operationalize a standard level Sales & Operations Planning process.In order to fill the research objective, empirical research in an in-depth case study format at a company that have the ambition to operationalize a standard level process was performed. More, a framework synthesis was carried out to identify the most suitable maturity framework for diagnosing organization’s S&OP maturity level.Through the S&OP Maturity Model Synthesis the framework by Grimson & Pyke (2007) is found the most appropriate for diagnosing a company within the specific context. Further, the major obstacles for complex manufacturing organizations identified are: Organizational complexity, product portfolio complexity and IT system support.This study firstly contributes to practitioners and researchers with guidance for organizational diagnosis. Secondly, by investigating and highlighting the major obstacles that complex manufacturing organizations encounter when seeking to evolve in a S&OP process. For researchers this indicates further research within each of these areas, and for practitioners the result signals where to focus time and resources in order to enable S&OP maturity progress.