Collaboration in Supply Chain Presently, Acquiring and

Collaboration in Supply Chain Presently, acquiring and obtaining a competitive edge is not only a concern of individual businesses but also enterprises in other words the whole supply chain network of partners. supply chain management and collaboration can create a lot of benefits which include overall supply chain visibility, development or specific products, marketing strategy, the control of inventory, purchasing and accounts and so on. The paper will focus on the importance of collaboration in the developing of supply chain inventory strategies.

There will be an example o the same issue provided. Collaboration among supply chain partners is a very hot topic however many of the supply chain managers are not sure of what is entailed in the concept of collaboration. For some collaboration simply means exchanging ideas and information among the partners involved that is geared towards a particular opportunity or problem where the members who are collaborating get to come together and share their best practices, talk about their concerns and possibly come up with solutions.

However for other companies collaboration can mean something that is different or greater. Companies that have embraced collaboration view this in terms of long-term ventures which are intended to allow the involved partners to synthesize their process of making decisions, planning and the eventual execution based on open ended plans keeping the desired outcomes of parties involved in mind (Autry, 2011).

Supply chain collaboration is therefore a means through which companies come together within a supply chain and work together towards mutual goals through the sharing of ideas, processes, information, knowledge, risks, rewards and so on. Collaboration is important and has numerous benefits.one of these benefits is to accelerate entry into new markets.it is vey easy for companies to enter new markets if and when they collaborate within a specific supply chain.

This is because what is made by manufactures can easily reach new consumers in a new market if only there is a link that is created. This link is created through collaboration and it can be between the manufacture and supplier or retailer. Collaboration also leads to a change in the relationship between value, cost, and profit equation. Collaboration also helps when it comes to creating supply chain inventory strategies (Benavides, Eskinazis, & Swan, 2012).

These advantages can be to the customers, the material suppliers and service suppliers.to the customer's collaboration helps in the reduction of inventory. With collaboration there will be very minimal inventory to the customers. This is because there are few people who are involved as some of the services or people involved have come together hence reduced inventory. Reduced inventory also applies to the material suppliers.

With a few number of people involved in the supply chain as a result of collaboration then there will be reduced inventory in the suppliers of materials within the supply chain. For the service suppliers due to the reduced number of people and inventory there will also be a reduced cost in freight. Collaboration also helps in reducing the warehousing costs. Warehousing costs can go very high when there is no collaboration since some goods might have to stay longer in the warehouses.

Collaboration can assist in inventory strategies in that there will be minimal time the goods will take within the warehouses thus low warehousing costs. Collaboration also helps in minimizing stock out conditions. Collaboration assist in ensuring that stock is constantly checked especially when in the warehouse since goods come in and go out at a fast rate. This will ensure that they are always alert and thus they will not find themselves in a situation where they are out of stock. Delivery is a very important aspect of supply chain.

This means that delivery should be.