Aggregate planning (AP) is widely used in industry to determine production levels given the forecasted demand for a family of products over a finite planning horizon. Here, we extend a spreadsheet-based AP approach to include both marketing and financial aspects. Previous authors have suggested a “linked spreadsheet” approach where the results of an earlier module are fed into a subsequent module. That is, it begins with a sales forecasting module to determine demand, then an aggregate planning module is used to compute production levels, and, finally, a cash budgeting module is used to evaluate the amounts of required cash. While this spreadsheet approach is commendable due to its practicality, unfortunately it is clear that it would give rise to suboptimal solutions due to its sequential nature. Here we extend this spreadsheet approach by developing an integrated model that incorporates both marketing and financial aspects into the traditional, operations-oriented aggregate planning methodology. On the marketing side, we determine optimal product prices and (the resulting) demand in each period, whereas on the financial side we include monthly sales collections, loan interest, fixed costs, and a minimum allowable cash balance in determining optimal production, workforce, and inventory levels. We incorporate cashflow accounting to ensure financial viability of the proposed plan.

@article{kingsleygnanendran-2026-1712,
  title={A Practical Framework for Aggregate Production Planning},
  author={Kingsley  Gnanendran and Kathleen  Iacocca and Robyn  Lawrence},
  journal={Operations and Supply Chain Management: An International Journal},
  year={2026},
  volume={19},
  number={1},
  pages={1--12},
  doi={10.31387/oscm0640503}
}

Kingsley  Gnanendran, Kathleen  Iacocca, Robyn  Lawrence (2026). A Practical Framework for Aggregate Production Planning. Operations and Supply Chain Management: An International Journal, 19(1), 1-12. https://doi.org/10.31387/oscm0640503