Title: Centralised and decentralised supply chain planning

Authors: Richard Pibernik, Eric Sucky

Addresses: MIT-Zaragoza International Logistics Program, Zaragoza Logistics Center, Avda. Gomez Laguna 25, 50009 Zaragoza, Spain. ' Department of Supply Chain Management, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Goethe-University, Mertonstr., 17, 60054 Frankfurt am Main, Germany

Abstract: The major task of supply chain planning – as the tactical level of supply chain management – is the determination of supply-chain-wide master plans on a medium-term basis. Both in literature and in commercial supply chain management systems, a centralised approach to supply chain planning is frequently proposed. Due to the incongruence between incentives of the firms involved in the supply chain and overall supply chain objectives, a centralised supply chain planning will either not be accepted or will not lead to system-wide effectiveness. For this reason, supply chain planning decisions are most commonly coordinated on a decentralised basis. In this paper, we analyse the implications and limitations of centralised and decentralised supply chain planning approaches. The results derived from this analysis establish the basis for introducing a generic, conceptual approach supporting the design of a decentralised supply chain planning.

Keywords: supply chain management; SCM; supply chain planning; centralised coordination; decentralised coordination; master planning; supply chain design.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISM.2006.008336

International Journal of Integrated Supply Management, 2006 Vol.2 No.1/2, pp.6 - 27

Published online: 05 Dec 2005 *

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