Collaborative supply chain management: The most promising practice for building efficient and sustainable supply chains

The Internet and its related services create an interactive working environment for users. Through the Internet, effective collaboration becomes possible whenever, wherever, and with whomever. Recently, there has been a significant growth in e-Business transactional information sharing and collaboration especially in supply chain management. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of contemporary supply-chain management systems, highlight examples of state-of-the-art practice in supply-chain management, and speculate about where this movement is headed. Some of the collaborative supply chain management products generating the most interest will also be examined. This paper concludes that collaborative supply chain management practices, especially CPFR, are firmly establishing themselves as the way forward for successful and sustainable business operations. By following CPFR companies can dramatically improve supply chain effectiveness with demand planning, synchronized production scheduling, logistic planning, and new product design. CPFR will force suppliers to innovate, building on strong one-to-one relationships that will drive smarter ways of doing things.