Assessing Improvement Opportunities and Risks of Supply Chain Transformation Projects

Planning and control systems have deeply evolved in recent years in order to cope with the needs of manufacturing firms. It is possible to identify a route of evolution that begins with the introduction of MRP systems (Orlicky, 1975) and, passing through the management of capacity and materials constraints, moves towards contemporary APS (Advanced Planning & Scheduling) and SCM (Supply Chain Management) solutions. New functions, such as ATP (Available to Promise) or CTP (Capable to Promise), are nowadays considered necessary conditions for order planning and quoting. On the other hand, the offer of planning systems has reached a high level of performance with APS, where huge sets of objectives and constraints are standardised in libraries so that manufacturing systems can be modelled in detail. APS/SCM systems represent the most relevant innovation in the world of manufacturing since the introduction of MRP systems in the Seventies (Turbide, 1998). In fact they marry the potentialities of modern processing systems with the most sophisticated heuristic / optimising / AI-based techniques developed by operations research. Although most of the benefits provided by APS/SCM systems are generally quite apparent to operations managers which have to manage complex logistics system, a fair evaluation of these benefits should be provided by APS/SCM Vendors in order to prove that the huge amount of investment connected to the acquisition, implementation and maintenance of APS/SCM is paid back. In particular, the evaluation process could be divided into two different phases: the first one concerns the quantification of the expected improvement, while the latter focuses on the risks which could turn out in lower-than-expected returns. It is worth here specifying that the term “risk” could be intended not only to address negative cases (actual benefits lower than expected) but even positive cases (actual benefits higher than expected); moreover, when evaluating the project risk, intangible benefits (and drawbacks), such as the organisational impact of the IT project, should be considered. This work describes the achievements of a research project, carried out at Politecnico di Milano, whose objective is to develop a new methodology, SNOpAck (Supply Network