Demand and Supply Chain Planning in Grocery Retail : An Operations Planning Framework

Matching consumer demand with supply is the core task of retailers and a key lever for increasing efficiency. Consumers demand high product availability and low prices, whereas retailers increase product variety and expand their field of logistical activities. These developments increase the complexity of the organization and the management of retail businesses. We provide a comprehensive operations planning framework for grocery retailing as we identify, describe and structure the coherent demand and supply chain planning problems. It integrates retail specifics and hierarchical and sequential decision aspects. We illustrate decision support systems for planning modules and exemplify the intertwined issues with horizontally and vertically integrated planning problems. Full paper is published in International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management