mechanisms and problems

Supply chain relationships have an important impact on the global supply chain performance and the way supply chain actors design their business strategy. Traditionally based on arm’s length agreements, the last decades witnessed the emergence of new kind of supply relationships based on collaboration and trust. This trend can be explained by the growing complexity of dependencies between supply chain actors due to the globalization of the economy and the rapid development of outsourcing and information technology. This situation has brought more uncertainty and risks to supply chain environment. To overcome these challenges, supply chain actors needs to coordinate their efforts to mitigate supply chain risks and maximize their benefits as well as the global performance of the overall supply chain. In this paper, a taxonomy of supply chain coordination problems is presented. Coordination mechanisms are classified along the main classes of parameters identified in literature, and are examined with regard to the state of the art in research on coordination. Research gaps are identified and perspectives for future research are proposed