Apics's Definition Of APS

APICS’s definition of APS is quite broad and does not clearly state any firm boundaries when deciding if a specific system from a specific vendor is APS or not. Still, it puts focus on some of the characteristics of APS, which are important to keep in mind when discussing these systems.
According to APICS an APS should therefore:
1. Use advanced mathematics to perform optimization or simulation.
2. Consider finite resources.
3. Include at least one of the following components:
a. Demand planning
b. Production planning
c. Production scheduling
d. Distribution planning
e. Transportation planning
To state that an APS should include some predetermined modules would be to narrow the definition too much, as there are many vendors focusing on just

Instead it states that the term has been launched by different software vendors independently, which is why they put focus on identifying the common, underlying structure of the most commonly used APS. One conclusion is that APS consists of several software modules, each of them covering a certain range of planning tasks according to the supply chain planning matrix developed by Rohde and Meyr (2000) (Figure 2.1).
In the supply chain planning matrix (Figure 2.1) two dimensions are used when classifying the planning tasks; planning horizon and supply chain process. The tasks are those that typically are present in most supply chain types (Fleischmann et al., 2008). With the supply chain planning matrix as a base, Meyr et al. (2008) lists which of the processes in the matrix that are supported by which APS modules (Figure 5), which gives a structure of APS that can be used when describing what module is

Due to the fact that Figure 5 is a well-known illustration of APS, it will be used as an illustrative base in this thesis. This is, apart from being familiar, a structured way of identifying APS, which will serve its purpose well here. The purpose being to identify the scope and focus of the research, but also to compare case descriptions.

2.2. Tactical planning with APS The tactical (or mid-term) planning level, which is the scope of this thesis, consists of tasks handling capacity, materials, distribution and mid-term sales planning (Figure 2.1). These tasks are primarily supported by the master planning and demand planning modules, but to some extent also by the demand fulfilment module, which uses the output from the master planning module as a frame when creating order promises (Figure 5). These three modules are described into more detail in the following, starting