Tools and practices for tactical delivery date setting in engineer-to-order environments: a systematic literature review

The research interest in topics related to production and supply chain planning and control in engineer-to-order (ETO) environments has grown significantly over the last three decades. One of the strategically important and challenging decision areas for planning and control in ETO environments is estimating and quoting feasible delivery dates and assessing the feasibility of customer-imposed delivery dates, collectively referred to as delivery date setting (DDS). While DDS has received substantial attention in literature, research supporting the process in ETO companies is fragmented – lacking clear guidelines for industrial practice and gaps to guide future research on the topic. To address these issues, this study systematically reviews literature supporting DDS in ETO environments, identifying tools and practices proposed in the extant literature, and proposing an agenda for future research. Findings suggest that most of the research has focused on developing planning and decision-support tools for tactical capacity planning to support reliable DDS, however, with a noticeable lack of alignment with industrial decision-support needs of ETO environments. Furthermore, despite previous research emphasising the importance of high levels of coordination and formalisation in the DDS process, there is a lack of research to guide practitioners in achieving high levels of coordination and formalisation.