Supply Chain Forecasting | European Journal of Operational Research
In this paper the authors argue that academic research in Supply Chain Forecasting (SCF) has tended to neglect some issues that are important in practice. Correspondingly, in areas of practical relevance, sound theoretical developments have rarely been translated into operational solutions or integrated in state-of-the-art decision support systems. The paper provides a comprehensive review of the literature, organised around some key supply chain dimensions, aiming at bridging the gap between theory and practice in the existing knowledge base in SCF.
The most promising approaches are highlighted and their integration in forecasting support systems is discussed. Current challenges are addressed both from a research and practitioner perspective and the paper provides a research and application agenda for further work in this area. Interestingly, it also makes a methodological contribution (in the preparation of review papers) in that the forecasting community was consulted (through a survey) when preparing the article and deciding on its content (rather than solely relying, as is common, upon the authors’ background and expertise).
The full bibliographical details of the paper are as follows: Syntetos, A.A., Babai, M.Z., Boylan, J.E., Kolassa, S. and Nikolopoulos, K. (2016) Supply Chain Forecasting: Theory, Practice, their Gap and the Future. European Journal of Operational Research, 252 (1), 1-26. For any comments or suggestions please contact Aris Syntetos.