OVERVIEW

There was much attention to partial insights, but the effects onother parts of the system or other objectives were overlooked.

Jan Riezebos ^[1]

This book explores how enterprises can do a better job of planning the flow of goods. It isthus directed toward businesses for which material flow is important: basic materials producers,manufacturers, distributors, and retailers of physical goods. Our objective is to illuminate thefundamental issues of product flow planning in a comprehensive way, to consider both thefundamental challenges and the context in which planning is performed. We will take an unusuallybroad view of all the types of industries that produce anddistribute physical products: consumer goods, industrial goods, high-technology products,chemicals, and so on.

Rather than being a textbook, this is a guide for the advanced practitioner or graduatestudent who is ready to hone his or her knowledge of how to design and implement better planningapproaches. We do not teach the basic concepts here or the details of various techniques. Rather,we try to provide perspective on what planning techniques work well, under what circumstances, andteach how to design a comprehensive planning approach for an enterprise.

This book is also an attempt to persuade the reader about the truth of certain propositions.Not being coy, we can introduce the most important of those propositions now:

• Planning should be an integrative function of the enterprise, and hence the operationsplanning processes need to be considered as a whole at least occasionally and rationalized. Weadvocate beginning with a comprehensive supply chain view...