Sales and operations planning maturity model: An application

Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) is an integrated planning process that aims to balance supply and demand in the medium and long term, while focusing on the strategic plans of organizations and profitability. S&OP has become very important in increasing the competitiveness of companies in the face of growing globalization, market uncertainty and customer demands. It enables organizations to take more agile action against opportunities and threats. However, organizations must determine how effectively the process is used to achieve these potential benefits. Maturity Models (MM) help to evaluate the current state of S&OP and lead to continuous improvement. The literature lacks an explanation of how an S&OP maturity assessment is made, and there is little study on how to develop a theoretically sound, rigorously tested maturity model. This shows that organizations need a comprehensive model to assess and improve the maturity of their S&OP processes. Hence, a research on the rigorous development of an S&OP maturity models is needed. This thesis seeks to solve this problem by presenting an S&OP maturity model that has been developed and tested using scientific methods, based on theoretical foundations, for organizations to assess their current status and draw a roadmap for improvements. For the solution of the problem, the Design Science Research method was adopted and a methodological approach was chosen for the development of the model. The dimensions and criteria determined from the literature were verified with the Delphi method, and their weights were determined with the AHP and SWARA methods. For the measurement of maturity, a self-assessment questionnaire was developed and statistically tested. S&OP MM consists of five maturity levels and five dimensions and twenty-nine sub-criteria. The applicability of the developed S&OP MM was tested with three case studies and the results showed that it was applicable. In addition, the effectiveness, utility, adequacy and usefulness of the model were evaluated. The results show that S&OP MM is applicable and can make important contributions to improve maturity. The effect of the S&OP process on firm performance was investigated by the survey method. As a result of the data obtained, it has been found that S&OP maturity has a positive and significant effect on firm performance.