A multidisciplinary review of collaborative supply chain planning

Supply chains are networks of loosely coupled business units characterized by distinct, yet mutually interdependent, planning decision domains. Such networks are generally managed hierarchically through the central and aggregated control of a corporate business planning unit, or through a cascade process referred to as upstream planning. In order to improve the limitations of such hierarchical planning methods, several projects initiated in different research domains have proposed various extensions and alternatives. This paper aims at analyzing this research literature using a framework that systematically investigates their coordination process, their local decision making ability and their advanced planning tools. This paper concludes with a discussion of the complementarities of the two main methodological domains that underlie these supply chain coordination systems (i.e., operations research and agent technology).