Dr. John Gattorna, a well-known academic and consultant on the Supply Chain, was chair for the Collaboration Track at this year's CSCMP conference in Philadelphia. He is also SCDigest's Living Supply Chains expert columnist, based in part on the book of the same name.

Last year at CSCMP, Gattorna offered a framework for segmenting a company's customers not based on traditional attributes such as size or channel or industry, but on their supply chain needs - what type of supply chain relationship and collaboration (if any) do they value? A typical segmentation might be as illustrated below.

The model, for example, says that for customers with which you have a "tight" relationship and a fairly predictable level of demand can be very collaborative and use data sharing to drive continuous replenishment. Both other relationships are "looser," and may require different approaches.

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