Planning horizons were yesterday: The case for harmonised planning in automotive manufacturing

In the automotive industry long and medium-term sales and operations and medium to short-term production planning often employs cascading planning processes. A frequent shortcoming of cascading planning is the misalignment and lack of feedback between different planning processes. Often long-term plans do not mirror restrictions of subsequent levels caused by unavailable resources or Iimited supplier capacities, resulting in costly problems in production due to unfeasible production programs and necessary troubleshooting. This paper will establish a system for the classification of planning restrictions and their originators. Further, it will shed some light on the interrelations between single planning tasks and the interdependencies of restrictions between different planning horizons.