Decision Support in Horticultural Supply Chains: A Planning Problem Framework for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

This paper investigates and systematizes planning problems along the supply chain of small and medium-sized companies in the horticultural market of ornamental plants, perennials, and cut flowers. The sector faces considerable challenges such as multiple planning uncertainties, product perishability, and considerable lead times. However, decisions in practice are often based on rules of thumb. Data-driven decision support is thus necessary to professionalize supply chain, logistics, and operations planning in the sector. We explore the practical planning problems with the help of expert interviews with people in charge of typical companies active in the market. We structure the planning problems along the supply chain according to their time horizon and highlight the critical elements of the planning tasks and horticultural specifics. We examine the status quo of research on decision support for these planning tasks with the help of a structured literature review, highlight research gaps, and outline promising future research directions. We find that the tactical planning domains of material/product requirement, production, and demand planning are especially critical in practice, and that there is a great need for research to develop practically relevant decision support systems. Such systems are currently available only to a limited extent in literature and are not fully compatible with requirements in the ornamental horticultural sector. By structuring and detailing the relevant decision problems, we contribute to an understanding of planning problems and decision-making in horticultural supply chains, and we provide a first comprehensive overview of planning problems, aligned literature, and research gaps for the horticultural business.