What About a Telescoping Planning Horizon?

This column discusses various aspects of the Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) planning horizon in terms of the length of time and the foci of decision making within it. A Telescoping Planning Horizon approach is introduced that extends the planning horizon based on all supply-demand lead times, as well as focuses on various decision-making and decision-support data used in the short-term versus the long-term segments within the horizon. LARRY LAPIDE | Dr. Lapide is a Lecturer at the University of Massachusetts, Boston and an MIT Research Affi liate. He has extensive experience in industry, consulting, business research, and academia as well as a broad range of forecasting, planning, and supply chain experiences. He was an industry forecaster for many years, led supply chain consulting projects for clients across a variety of industries, and has researched supply chain and forecasting software as an analyst. He is the recipient of the inaugural Lifetime Achievement in Business Forecasting & Planning Award from the IBF. He welcomes comments on his columns at llapide@mit.edu. (This is an ongoing column in the Journal, which is intended to give a brief view on a potential topic of ...