Unveiling Enablers and Inhibitors of Collaborative Planning

As part of organizations' drive towards supply chain integration. Collaborative Planning (CP) emerged in the late 1990s. Lack of visibility of demand (in the form of point of sale data) and inventory holding status across the supply chain, together with adversarial relationships between trading partners remain as significant barriers to the goal of supply chain integration. Collaborative planning, originating from the consumer packaged goods industry, is an approach that promises to overcome these barriers, and seeks through joint planning and development of a clearer understanding of the dynamics of the supply chain replenishment process to deliver some of the promised benefits of actual supply chain integration. A case study of six organizations across three tiers of a supply chain in the UK grocery sector identifies many critical enablers and inhibitors at strategic, tactical and operational levels, both between and within the case study organizations.