Modelling collaborative planning and scheduling scenarios that include human and computer decision activities

Most approaches to supply chain planning follow a traditional hierarchical view of participant organisations connecting at levels of management control. Correspondingly, the level of task (operational) control consists of human operators interacting with machines or their managers. That is they make no decisions independent of their management. From this perspective, coordination across supply chains occurs only at managerial levels, where management sets common and individual goals and makes plans. This thesis challenges this viewpoint by placing collaborative planning and scheduling within a systems-thinking context. From this perspective, supply-chain planning systems are viewed as purposeful systems, formed by purposeful individuals, who coordinate activities collaboratively. Field observations demonstrate substantial differences between official plans and actual execution. Long-term plans, which are developed by the management levels to coordinate interactions between organisations, are not necessary followed and implemented in practice. These observations stimulate investigation into the authentic coordination points across supply chains. The field studies show that there are relational networks across supply chains at operational levels. This thesis utilises Activity Theory for detailed analysis of these networks, which illustrates that they are the fundamental controllers of operations and the coordinators of activities. Further, cognitive analysis of these relationships substantiates the influential roles of human experts at the task control level in coordinating operations across supply chains. This viewpoint contrasts the hierarchical perspective and sustains, at least in highly uncertain situations, that operational levels drive production practice across supply chains. Essentially, collaborative planning takes place in an organic arrangement, where the whole system progressively updates plans in action–recognition cycles. This perspective leads the research towards the investigation of human behaviour and collaborative relationships.