Supply Chain Collaboration Characterization

supply chain collaboration has been viewed as a business process whereby two or more supply chain partners work together toward common goals and achieve more mutual benefits than can be achieved by acting alone (Mohr and Spekman 1994 Mentzer et al. 2001 Stank et al. 2001 Manthou et al. 2004 Sheu et al. 2006). The literature also reveals the importance of planning activities for 

Second, supply chain collaboration has been portrayed as the formation of close, long term partnerships where supply chain members work jointly and share information, resources, and certain degrees of risk in order to accomplish mutual objectives (Sriram et al. 1992 Ellram and Edis 1996 Bowersox et al. 2003 Golicic et al. 2003). Firms voluntarily agree to integrate human, financial, or technical resources in order to create a better business model (Bowersox et al. 2003, p. 22). 

Ellram (1995) adds the most important dimension of information sharing, an agreement between a buyer and a supplier that involves a commitment over an extended time period, and includes the sharing of information along with a sharing of the risks and rewards of the relationship. So does Macbeth (1998), 

A long-term partnership jnocess where supply chain partners work closely together to achieve common goals and mutual benefits. 

The extent to which a firm shares a variety of relevant, accurate, complete and confidential information in a timely manner with its supply chain partners 

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Chapter 4 ( Supply Chain Collaboration Characterization ) identihes and dehnes the nature and characteristics of supply chain collaboration as seven interweaving components of information sharing, goal congruence, decision synchronization, incentive alignment, resource sharing, collaborative communication, and joint knowledge creation. 

From the site of production to the consumer, the biomass supply chain is characterized by many spatially distributed, time-variable biomass sources and many spatially distributed providers and consumers (see Fig. 2). A multitude of actors (forest owners, forestry operations, private forestry contractors, carriers, transport companies, combustion plant operators, etc.) must collaborate in the strongly customer-oriented supply chain. This diverse and complex network of partners collaborates in different operations and exchanges information through a multitude of interfaces. 

Second, in characterizing and conceptualizing supply chain collaboration, researchers focus more on process integration (e.g., goal congruence, decision... 

The trend for companies to focus on core competencies has forced enterprises to collaborate closely with their suppliers as well as with their customers to improve business performance (Lutz et al. 1999). The next step in the supply chain concept is the production or supply networks (Figure 15), which are characterized by intensive communication between the partners. TTie aim of the system is to allocate among the collaborating partners the excess in production demand that could not be faced by one of them alone. This capability provides the entire network with the necessary flexibility to respond quickly to peaks in demand for the products. A tool developed at the Institute of Production Systems at Hanover University, the FAS/net, employs basic methods of production logistics to provide procedures for the efficient use of capacity redundancies in a production network. The tool satisfies the following requirements derived from the capacity subcontracting process ... 

Moreover, supply chain relationships are frequently characterized by distrust. The fear of appropriation of the shared information by partners and/or competitors is present in most collaborating firms (Lee and Whang 2000). Consequently, in order to prevent opportunistic behavior, many firms decide to reduce the amount of shared information (Li and Lin 2006). On top of this, firms often do not want to lose power due to the revelation of internal knowledge. However, the concern is not only directed at the immediate exploitation and publication of secrets, but also at indirect transfer, that is, the unintended leakage of information, via the partner,... 

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