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Introduction
The need of the manufacturing industry to adapt to changing conditions has increased in recent decades (Karlsson, 2003; Olhager, 2013). As a result, successful companies have realised the need for a structured process to create realistic delivery and production plans (Singh, 2009). Sales and operations planning (S & OP) has become a key manufacturing planning and control (MPC) process enabling holistic planning by balancing demand and supply, as well as enforcing integration among company functions, business strategy, and operational planning and in the supply chain (Tuomikangas and Kaipia, 2014). Successfully implemented S & OP generates benefits such as improved revenues, reduced inventories, improved customer service, and product commercialisation (AMR Research, 2009), as well as improved communication and shared goals (Sheldon, 2006). Still, realising these benefits has been far from easy (Grimson and Pyke, 2007; Thomé et al., 2012). One reason may be that S & OP is designed as a generic and formal procedure (Ivert Kjellsdotter et al., 2015, Noroozi, 2014), even though the previous literature indicates that it is contingency dependent (Ivert Kjellsdotter and Jonsson, 2010; Oliva and Watson, 2011; Thomé et al., 2012). How to adjust the S & OP process to the specific planning environment (PE) of the individual company has not been explored to the necessary extent (Noroozi, 2014).
The MPC literature, in general, largely identifies the need to design planning processes in accordance with the PE in order to achieve successful processes (Jonsson and Mattsson, 2003; Olhager and Selldin, 2007; Kaipia and Holmström, 2007; Fredriksson et al., 2014). However, the majority of these earlier studies addressed operational or strategic planning. Studies discussing S & OP and environmental aspects are rare. In their model-based study Thomé et al. (2014) investigate the moderating effect of the complexity of the environment on the link between S & OP and operational performance. Olhager and Rudberg (2002) study the link between PE variables and the design of the MPC system, where S & OP is considered one of several processes. Thus, even though the previous literature indicates its importance, no focused studies exist on how PE variables affect S & OP and how S & OP could be designed to cope with PE variables. Recent literature reviews in the...