ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the institutional framework of supply planning and focuses on the interrelationship with output planning. It examines the relationship between supply planners and enterprises and explores the planning of supply organs, their targets and incentive schemes. The chapter attempts to integrate the function of planners as 'suppliers' to that of enterprises as 'producers and suppliers' and hence weave it into the main theme of this work, namely the behaviour of the Soviet enterprise. The Soviet system of planning industrial supply is separated into those institutions directly linked to and subordinate to the Gossnab and those related to ministries, either All-Union or republican. The degree to which the development of direct links increases flexibility in the supply function of enterprises vis-a-vis other enterprises is very uncertain. In analysing the behaviour of the Soviet industrial enterprise it is important to draw attention to a potential conflict within its objectives.
