Managing the dynamic needs of engineering resources through sales and operations planning

Paper in proceedings, 2019

This paper explores the uncertainty related to medium-term engineering needs considering sales and operations planning (S&OP). The areas of uncertainty and how they are addressed by S&OP are investigated in an engineer-to-order setting. Uncertainties stem from customer orders and critical competences and are minimized through integrating engineering resource planning into S&OP sub-processes and organization, and through explicating methodologies using IT tools that also support scenario planning. To improve the effect of S&OP, measuring short- and long-term performance is recommended, and aligning S&OP with the bidding and organization development processes is important. Future research may replicate this study using multiple cases.