– The purpose of this paper is to investigate the implementation and performance benefits of sales and operations planning (S&OP) within organizations in Asia Pacific.
– A case study method was used, with two companies selected. The first company had recently commenced S&OP and applied it to facilitate new product introduction, while the second had integrated its supplier into an existing S&OP program. Supply chain performance data were collected and analyzed in the context of an S&OP maturity framework.
– Both cases show significant improvements in supply chain performance. In one case, the implementation of a common form of S&OP resulted in a 67 percent reduction in order lead time for newly introduced products. The second case demonstrated a 30 percent reduction in inventory levels and a 52 percent improvement in forecast accuracy through more advanced S&OP processes.
– This paper studies just two companies and is not intended to be representative of outcomes at all companies implementing S&OP. Further studies are required for a more generalized picture of S&OP implementations in the Asia Pacific region to emerge.
– The findings illustrate the potential quantitative benefits of adopting S&OP and the circumstances under which these benefits may be achieved. The results are also supportive of the notion of a maturity model for S&OP implementations.
– This paper strengthens the link between practitioner and academic literature by providing empirical evidence of the benefits of S&OP. Furthermore, the findings are derived from the Asia Pacific region for which there have been few academic studies on S&OP to date.
