Abstract
The supply management literature has widely recognized the benefits of coordination and collaboration in the vendor-buyer relationship. It has specifically identified the gains in integrating inventory and transportation decisions. Also, recently, a new dynamic programming model has been developed that integrate inventory, transport and setups. We present the real case of the buyer-vendor collaboration on the material construction sector. The vendor provides the adhesives for the kitchen bench installation. The buyer provides the complete solution to the finals users, the professional placing the kitchen bench. We compare the steps adopted in the real collaboration against the results obtained in a Vensim® simulation. And finally the different coordination solutions are reviewed.
