Sales and Operations Planning for Delivery Date Setting in Engineer-to-Order Maritime Equipment Manufacturing: Insights from Two Case

Delivery date setting (DDS) is a challenging and competitively critical tactical decision in engineer-to-order (ETO) environments, which requires integrated planning for effective decision-making. Despite the variety of industrial contexts in DDS literature, the maritime equipment industry has been an unexplored context vis-à-vis planning needs for effective DDS. This study uses a sales and operations planning (S&OP) framework to investigate the current state of the DDS process of two maritime equipment suppliers. Findings indicate that the low market demand over the last few years has influenced the DDS process design in the companies, suggesting that the process should be reconfigured to remain effective under periods of high demand. More cases from the maritime equipment industry are needed to assess if the findings are valid across the industry.