A taxonomy of collaboration in supply chains

The success or failure of a product design and development (PD) project depends strongly on the right contributions from its various suppliers. This is specifically the case when these suppliers do not just provide off-the-shelf items, but also contribute to the design and development of the final product. Identification, evaluation, selection, negotiation, contract signing and finally collaboration with suppliers are crucial and necessary steps towards potential success. This paper argues that a supply chain must be designed and deployed step by step while the product design is being frozen. This article presents exploratory results about a general framework called CEPS (Co-Evolution of Product design and Supply Chain) to integrate supply chain design and deployment coherently with product design. We focus on suppliers’ contribution and propose criteria to classify the collaboration situations connecting them to a given company and assess the a priori risk associate with these situations. This classification helps a company to evaluate potential risks of a PD project which integrates suppliers