(380g) Supply Chain Planning and Execution: How to Handle the Gap

Considerable attention has been given to supply chain planning in academia as well as practice. From the practical point of view, planning is not just one decision-making event but a series of sensitive business activities: targets to be established, specific routes to accomplish them to be provided, and revision of the targets to be made in response to the variations, etc.

Although the outcome of the planning is denoted by just numbers and items, it conveys the complex messages for the operation of the companies. It contains both of strategy of the managerial board and the willingness of the execution parts to fulfil their targets. The result of the mathematical models is not directly used for the actual planning practice. Because planning is a framework involving many issues of practical importance, there are many areas unexplored in academia besides establishing conventional models and proposing solution algorithms. This paper discusses some of such issues from the practitioner's perspective and highlights the importance of its intelligent data management for the successful planning system. It is hoped that the issues addressed in this paper contribute to introducing new areas for further academic research which can bridge the gap between academia and industry.