Advanced Planning and Scheduling system: An overview of gaps and potential sample solutions

This paper intends to take up an overview of gaps existing in Advanced Planning Scheduling system (APS). Even if APS system provide a number of solution approaches for several practical problems (inventory and global costs reduction, customer service level increase, pertinent decision making), improvement ways still emerge. Firstly, we have led a functional analysis, to identify some gaps about supply chain management activities (financial aspect and Engineering To Order concept). Then, we made a literature review to identify works have been done in these areas. This review allowed us to outline a second kind of weakness liked to the functional range of some modules too (demand forecasting, proposition of lots sizing, reactivity). So, gaps and potential solutions proposed in the scientist literature, are presented in this paper. We conclude by underlining another type of problem, concerning the management needed to install correctly an APS system.