Key words: supply chain collaborations, drivers and resistors, gain sharing, partner selection

“Efficient Collaborations in Supply Chains”

In the course of the last decades, companies started to realize the benefits of setting up a supply chain collaboration. Various challenges such as scarce resources, increased competition among the organizations and higher customer expectations forced companies to look outside their organizational boundaries to search for parties with whom they can collaborate. Several researchers outline the sustainable competitive advantages that can be achieved through supply chain collaborations, such as cost savings, cycle time reduction and improved service performance. Despite the fact that supply chain collaborations may have significant benefits, collaborations bring along challenges. In this thesis, three collaboration challenges were critically investigated and approaches to tackle these challenges were outlined. First, the difficulty of identifying and understanding relevant drivers and resistors for launching a collaboration has been investigated. Second, the gain sharing challenge has been discussed. Third, an approach to handle the challenge of finding the right coalition partner based on geographical dimensions has been outlined.