Order Planning

In the context of managing global production networks, the way customer orders are planned and scheduled in the production network highly affects a company’s competitiveness. A well-defined and well-executed planning process enables manufacturing companies to satisfy their customers’ needs to a high degree while keeping production costs at a low level. In a company’s overall planning hierarchy consisting of long-term strategic, mid-term tactical, and short-term operational planning, order planning can be positioned between the mid-term and the short-term planning processes. As it can be seen in the automotive industry, for example, the transition from mid- to short-term planning currently lacks consistency since the primary and secondary demand planned mid-term does not necessarily match the real customer demand arising in the short term. Customer order planning in this context can significantly improve consistency by bringing together demand forecast and real customer orders.