Summary

Sales and operations planning (S&OP) can be a strong vehicle for coordinating the functional areas of a firm as well as for communication with supply-chain partners. The output of S&OP is an aggregate plan. An aggregate plan provides both manufacturing and service firms the ability to respond to changing customer demands and produce with a winning strategy.

Aggregate schedules set levels of inventory, production, subcontracting, and employment over an intermediate time range, usually 3 to 18 months. This chapter describes two aggregate planning techniques: the popular graphical approach and the transportation method of linear programming.

The aggregate plan is an important responsibility of an operations manager and a key to efficient ...

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