One challenge organizations are facing in all industries is determining the likely events of the future and developing strategies to handle these challenges. Sales and operations planning are a decision-making process and tool that helps organizations to allocate resources not only to handle the challenges but also to take advantage of future conditions by balancing supply and demand. There is only a limited amount of framework and models available today. This project will divulge and reveal a new framework for sales and operations planning which has been developed in collaboration with an organization operating in the aerospace and defence industry. The basis of the framework consists of a monthly five step process that facilitates the organization in making decisions based on long term (five-years) organizational goals and tying them in with project specific needs. Ultimately, this will provide a centralized system in meeting current project specific demands whilst ensuring future operations are not compromised but enhanced. The company’s current sales and operations planning maturity level was evaluated and compared to the developed framework to find gaps of what needs to change for the company to have proactive sales and operations planning.

Litteraturen om Sälj- & verksamhetsplanering (S&OP) är generellt sett samstämmig kring slutsatsen att  en  sådan  process är  överlägsen traditionell planering,  där  varje  funktion planerar  sin  egen verksamhet. Men även om konceptet och möjliga fördelar är lätta att förstå, så har det visat sig svårt för många företag att operationalisera processen i verkligheten. Syftet med denna studie var därför att undersöka vilka stora hinder ett komplext tillverkande företag ställs inför vid operationaliserandet av en Sälj- & verksamhetsplaneringsprocess. För att fylla detta syfte så  genomfördes en djup fallstudie på  ett företag med ambitionen att operationalisera en standardprocess. Vidare gjordes en syntes av idag existerande mognadsramverk för processen, för att identifiera det mest passande ramverket för att diagnostisera en organisation och dess mognadsnivå. Genom att syntetisera litteraturen identifierades ramverket framtaget av Grimson och Pyke (2007) som det mest passande ramverket för att diagnostisera en organisation i den specifika kontexten. Vidare identifierades tre problemområden som i störst utsträckning hindrar operationaliserandet av en standardprocess: organisationens komplexitet, produktportföljskomplexitet samt IT-stöd. Denna  studie  bidrar  till  både  utövare  och  forskare  med  vägledning  för  att  framgångsrikt diagnostisera en organisations mognadsnivå inom processen, genom att identifiera och belysa de största hindren en komplex tillverkande organisation möter. För forskare påvisar detta att djupare forskning behövs inom vart och ett av dessa problemområden, och för företag och organisationer belyser   denna   studie   vart   resurser   ska   fokuseras   för   att   möjliggöra   ett   framgångsrikt operationaliserande av en Sälj- & Verksamhetsplaneringsprocess. / In general, literature is unanimous in concluding that Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) is superior to traditional decoupled planning. But even though the concept and potential benefits of S&OP  is  easy  to  comprehend,  the  process  has  proven  to  be  difficult  for  organizations  to operationalize in reality. Thus, the objective of this research was to investigate what major obstacles complex manufacturing organizations face while striving to operationalize a standard level Sales & Operations Planning process. In order to fill the research objective, empirical research in an in-depth case study format at a company that have the ambition to operationalize a standard level process was performed. More, a framework synthesis was carried out to identify the most suitable maturity framework for diagnosing organization’s S&OP maturity level. Through the S&OP Maturity Model Synthesis the framework by Grimson & Pyke (2007) is found the most appropriate for diagnosing a company within the specific context. Further, the major obstacles  for  complex  manufacturing  organizations  identified  are:  Organizational  complexity, product portfolio complexity and IT system support. This study firstly contributes to  practitioners and  researchers with guidance for  organizational diagnosis.   Secondly,   by   investigating   and   highlighting   the   major   obstacles   that   complex manufacturing organizations encounter when seeking to evolve in a S&OP process.  For researchers this indicates further research within each of these areas, and for practitioners the result signals where to focus time and resources in order to enable S&OP maturity progress.

One way to increase capacity is to optimise production. This research focuses on optimising material handling using Lean principles, factory layout analysis and supply & operation planning. The purpose is to see how the strategies found in these theories effect the change. An organisations readiness to change management shows how fast it can grow in a competitive world. The methodology used to collect data is by observations, interviews, literature review and secondary data. The research design is a case study, as it allows to collect multiple forms of data and mainly because it is done within a particular factory. The data analysis is done by forming themes, i.e., thematic analysis. Empirics were gathered from the company in focus about how their production runs. The empirics focused on the themes found by analysing data. The result gives strategies that can be followed for optimised material handling and the behaviour of employees and managers when change is suggested. The conclusion is that, although the changes were perceived in a positive way, with willingness to change, the subjects did not want to dig deeper into how they could benefit from it.

Revolutionary mobile technologies, such as high-speed packet access 3G (HSPA+) and LTE, have significantly increased mobile data rate over the radio link. While most of the world looks at this revolution as a blessing to their day-to-day life, a little-known fact is that these improvements over the radio access link results in demanding tremendous improvements in bandwidth on the backhaul network. Having said this, today's Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) are intemperately impacted as a result of this excessive smartphone usage. The operational costs (OPEX) associated with traditional backhaul methods are rising faster than the revenue generated by the new data services. Building a mobile backhaul network is very different from building a commercial data network. A mobile backhaul network requires (i) QoS-based traffic with strict requirements on delay and jitter (ii) high availability/reliability. While most ISPs and MNOs have promised advantages of redundancy and resilience to guarantee high availability, there is still the specter of failure in today's networks. The problems of network failures in today's networks can be quickly but clearly ascertained. The underlying observation is that ISPs and MNOs are still exposed to rapid fluctuations and/or unpredicted breakdowns in traffic; it goes without saying that even the largest operators can be affected. But what if, these operators could now put in place designs and mechanisms to improve network survivability to avoid such occurrences? What if mobile network operators can come up with low-cost backhaul solutions together with ensuring the required availability and reliability in the networks? With this problem statement in-hand, the overarching theme of this dissertation is within the following scopes: (i) to provide low-cost backhaul solutions; the motivation here being able to build networks without over-provisioning and then to bring-in new resources (link capacity/bandwidth) on occasions of unexpected traffic surges as well as on network failure conditions for particularly ensuring premium services (ii) to provide uninterrupted communications even at times of network failure conditions, but without redundancy. Here a slightly greater emphasis is laid on tackling the 'last-mile' link failures. The scope of this dissertation is therefore to propose, design and model novel network architectures for improving effective network survivability and network capacity, at the same time by eliminating network-wide redundancy, adopted within the context of mobile backhaul networks. Motivated by this, we study the problem of how to share the available resources of a backhaul network among its competitors, with whom a Service Level Agreement (SLA) has been concluded. Thus, we present a systematic study of our proposed solutions focusing on a variety of empirical resource sharing heuristics and optimization frameworks. With this background, our work extends towards a novel fault restoration framework which can cost-effectively provide protection and restoration for the operators, enabling them with a parameterized objective function to choose desired paths based on traffic patterns of their end-customers. We then illustrate the survivability of backhaul networks with reduced amount of physical redundancy, by effectively managing geographically distributed backhaul network equipments which belong to different MNOs using 'logically-centralized' physically-distributed controllers, while meeting strict constraints on network availability and reliability

Les évolutions technologies mobiles majeures, tels que les réseaux mobiles 3G, HSPA+ et LTE, ont augmenté de façon significative la capacité des données véhiculées sur liaison radio. Alors que les avantages de ces évolutions sont évidents à l’usage, un fait moins connu est que ces améliorations portant principalement sur l’accès radio nécessitent aussi des avancées technologiques dans le réseau de collecte (backhaul) pour supporter cette augmentation de bande passante. Les fournisseurs d’accès Internet (FAI) et les opérateurs de réseau mobile doivent relever un réel défi pour accompagner l’usage des smartphones. Les coûts opérationnels associés aux méthodes traditionnelles de backhaul augmentent plus vite que les revenus générés par les nouveaux services de données. Ceci est particulièrement vrai lorsque le réseau backhaul doit lui-même être construit sur des liens radio. Un tel réseau de backhaul mobile nécessite (i) une gestion de qualité de service (QoS) liée au trafic avec des exigences strictes en matière de délai et de gigue, (ii) une haute disponibilité / fiabilité. Alors que la plupart des FAI et des opérateurs de réseau mobile font état des avantages de mécanismes de redondance et de résilience pour garantir une haute disponibilité, force est de constater que les réseaux actuels sont encore exposés à des indisponibilités. Bien que les causes de ces indisponibilités soient claires, les fluctuations rapides et / ou des pannes imprévues du trafic continuent d’affecter les plus grands opérateurs. Mais ces opérateurs ne pourraient-ils pas mettre en place des modèles et des mécanismes pour améliorer la survie des réseaux pour éviter de telles situations ? Les opérateurs de réseaux mobiles peuvent-ils mettre en place ensemble des solutions à faible coût qui assureraient la disponibilité et la fiabilité des réseaux ? Compte tenu de ce constat, cette thèse vise à : (i) fournir des solutions de backhaul à faible coût ; l’objectif est de construire des réseaux sans fil en ajoutant de nouvelles ressources à la demande plutôt que par sur-dimensionnements, en réponse à un trafic inattendu surgit ou à une défaillance du réseau, afin d’assurer une qualité supérieure de certains services (ii) fournir des communications sans interruption, y compris en cas de défaillance du réseau, mais sans redondance. Un léger focus porte sur l’occurrence de ce problème sur le lien appelé «dernier kilomètre» (last mile). Cette thèse conçoit une nouvelle architecture de réseaux backhaul mobiles et propose une modélisation pour améliorer la survie et la capacité de ces réseaux de manière efficace, sans reposer sur des mécanismes coûteux de redondance passive. Avec ces motivations, nous étudions le problème de partage de ressources d'un réseau de backhaul entre opérateurs concurrents, pour lesquelles un accord de niveau de service (SLA) a été conclu. Ainsi, nous présentons une étude systématique de solutions proposées portant sur une variété d’heuristiques de partage empiriques et d'optimisation des ressources. Dans ce contexte, nous poursuivons par une étude sur un mécanisme de recouvrement après panne qui assure efficacement et à faible coût la protection et la restauration de ressources, permettant aux opérateurs via une fonction basée sur la programmation par contraintes de choisir et établir de nouveaux chemins en fonction des modèles de trafic des clients finaux. Nous illustrons la capacité de survie des réseaux backhaul disposant d’un faible degré de redondance matérielle, par la gestion efficace d’équipements de réseau de backhaul répartis géographiquement et appartenant aux différents opérateurs, en s’appuyant sur des contrôleurs logiquement centralisés mais physiquement distribués, en respectant des contraintes strictes sur la disponibilité et la fiabilité du réseau / Revolutionary mobile technologies, such as high-speed packet access 3G (HSPA+) and LTE, have significantly increased mobile data rate over the radio link. While most of the world looks at this revolution as a blessing to their day-to-day life, a little-known fact is that these improvements over the radio access link results in demanding tremendous improvements in bandwidth on the backhaul network. Having said this, today’s Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) are intemperately impacted as a result of this excessive smartphone usage. The operational costs (OPEX) associated with traditional backhaul methods are rising faster than the revenue generated by the new data services. Building a mobile backhaul network is very different from building a commercial data network. A mobile backhaul network requires (i) QoS-based traffic with strict requirements on delay and jitter (ii) high availability/reliability. While most ISPs and MNOs have promised advantages of redundancy and resilience to guarantee high availability, there is still the specter of failure in today’s networks. The problems of network failures in today’s networks can be quickly but clearly ascertained. The underlying observation is that ISPs and MNOs are still exposed to rapid fluctuations and/or unpredicted breakdowns in traffic; it goes without saying that even the largest operators can be affected. But what if, these operators could now put in place designs and mechanisms to improve network survivability to avoid such occurrences? What if mobile network operators can come up with low-cost backhaul solutions together with ensuring the required availability and reliability in the networks? With this problem statement in-hand, the overarching theme of this dissertation is within the following scopes: (i) to provide low-cost backhaul solutions; the motivation here being able to build networks without over-provisioning and then to bring-in new resources (link capacity/bandwidth) on occasions of unexpected traffic surges as well as on network failure conditions for particularly ensuring premium services (ii) to provide uninterrupted communications even at times of network failure conditions, but without redundancy. Here a slightly greater emphasis is laid on tackling the ‘last-mile’ link failures. The scope of this dissertation is therefore to propose, design and model novel network architectures for improving effective network survivability and network capacity, at the same time by eliminating network-wide redundancy, adopted within the context of mobile backhaul networks. Motivated by this, we study the problem of how to share the available resources of a backhaul network among its competitors, with whom a Service Level Agreement (SLA) has been concluded. Thus, we present a systematic study of our proposed solutions focusing on a variety of empirical resource sharing heuristics and optimization frameworks. With this background, our work extends towards a novel fault restoration framework which can cost-effectively provide protection and restoration for the operators, enabling them with a parameterized objective function to choose desired paths based on traffic patterns of their end-customers. We then illustrate the survivability of backhaul networks with reduced amount of physical redundancy, by effectively managing geographically distributed backhaul network equipments which belong to different MNOs using ‘logically-centralized’ physically-distributed controllers, while meeting strict constraints on network availability and reliability

Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) is used as a tactical business process to balanceorganisations’ demand and supply. This is done through long-term planning of manufacturing and sales in comparison to the forecasted demand and resource capacity planning. S&OP link the corporate strategic plan to the day-to-day operation plans. Based on S&OP, a more advanced and mature model named Integrated Business Planning (IBP) has been developed. IBP have a stronger consideration of the financial perspectives of the outcomes in the processand increases the collaboration of the end-to-end supply chain. The case company; Nouryon, transitioned from S&OP processes to IBP in 2019. However, the organisation’s implemented model was unsatisfactorily received, therefore an initiative to redeploy and improve the Integrated Business Planning processes started. The purpose of this research is to analyse how the organisation’s IBP processes can be improved, by structuring and developing standardized processes. The Master Thesis project was conducted in collaboration with Business Planning managers and executives globally throughout the organisation. To achieve the purpose of the project, a literature review, interviews, observations, document collection and a questionnaire were executed at Nouryon’s Nordic Business Center. Nouryon’s Integrated Business Planning processes were mapped by collecting and analysing internal data.The current state was evaluated against the literature to identify any gaps from a theoretical perspective to fulfil the processes. The organisation’s current maturity level was evaluated by applying thematic content analysison the interviews, internal company document collection and outputs from the questionnaire. These were based on several research frameworks in S&OP maturity levels and Oliver Wight’s Class A Checklist for Business Excellence. Consequently, deriving improvements of how Nouryon could reach a higher maturity level. The results of the thesis project were presented and used in internal workshops together with global cross-functional teams. New and improved Integrated Business Planning processes were drafted in the workshop for the PMR meetings. The workshop for SMR is planned for a later date and will be conducted using a similar format. In conclusion, no theoretical standard framework for using IBP is available. Various literaturesources present theories on how organisations should form their processes, including a guideline on what topics should be covered in the IBP meetings. Nouryon can achieve a higher maturity level in its IBP processes, by addressing improvement suggestions related to the analysis of this project. Furthermore, the recommendations were collected, summarised, and categorised using an impact and effort matrix for efficient implementation.