Cooperation models for Supply Chain Management

Abstract

Working in Supply Chains or Supply Networks (SN) requires to efficiently manage the information flow all along the network, and as a consequence, to define efficient coordination/cooperation mechanisms between partners. This problem is usually considered according to two main points of view: centralised planning of the SN using an APS (Advanced Planning System), or point-to-point relationship, each point being possibly managed by an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system. The autonomy of each partner makes the centralised planning solution difficult, while in point-to-point relationship, it seems to be implicitly considered that a high level plan (Sales and Operation Planning-SOP) is generated by the final assembler, like in the automotive or aircraft industry, and is used for building a Procurement Planning which is sent as forecasts to the partners/suppliers. Iteratively, this procurement planning should allow the suppliers themselves building their SOP, and then generating forecasts for their own suppliers. Therefore, the main stream of the information flow should cross the chain from its end to its beginning, whereas the material flow goes in the reverse direction. This global framework seems to be considered as consistent on its own, independently from the characteristics of the involved partners. After having performed a number of case studies in various SN, we do believe that the characteristics of the companies involved in the SN have a deep influence on information processing and especially on the way the procurement planning is built and processed, setting into question the ideal case of an unidirectional information flow. In this paper, we suggest to define taxonomies of companies which in our opinion influence information processing all along the SN. We then suggest a generic model for coordination based on these taxonomies. Typical coordination situations will be discussed in order to show that these models may provide an efficient way to improve the use of Information and Communication (IC) tools with the final goal to define more realistic Procurement Plans within the Supply Networks.