How to manage robust tactical planning with an APS (Advanced Planning Systems)

Nowadays, managing correctly the always changing customer demands is a challenge for companies, especially because of its impact on the Supply Chain (Forrester effect). Tactical planning is very useful in establishing robust plans. This paper proposes an alternative policy to traditional practices (frozen horizon ...), the so-called “reference plan”, to obtain more stable and robust production plans at tactical level. Using an industrial application and simulations, we illustrate how the different practices contribute to robustness in planning. The “reference plan” policy seems to realize the best compromise between stability, robustness costs and service levels achieved by the tactical plans.