Supply chain management: a framework to characterize the collaborative strategies

The current intense competition forces enterprises to pay attention to supply chain collaboration with their upstream and downstream partners. Different collaborative strategies such as Quick Response (QR), Efficient Consumer Response (ECR), Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) or Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment (CPFR) have been already proposed. The key to ensuring that the supply chain partners are progressing on the right track of creating the best-in-class practice lays on their ability to choose the appropriate strategy. The current paper proposes a framework, based on analysis grids and graphical representations, which help better characterizing these strategies. The analysis grids use several characterization criteria to express the collaboration nature and its extent. For a better understanding, this framework is then applied to the CPFR strategy.