Spend any amount of time working with supply chains, and one thing becomes clear: The traditional environment of the supply chain is mostly one of competition. That's because, in an effort to earn a customer's business and meet their demands, suppliers are often pitted one against the other to offer the lowest cost possible. But when it comes to overall success of the supplier/client relationship, this short-term competitive approach leaves untapped opportunities in terms of improved quality, cost and lead time, as each along the chain pursues what's best for themselves as opposed to what's best for the whole.

TAKE Supply Chain has released version 7.4 of OneSCM Enterprise, the vendor's software for supply-chain collaboration.

Collaboration has been an alluring concept in the world of supply chain for years, but many have found that pilots often fail to expand beyond the honeymoon phase. Part of the problem may be trust gaps at the senior executive level that are worse than at lower managerial levels. This is not irrational, but reflects the fact that top executives see a struggle over jointly created value that is less obvious further down the organisation. - Kevin O'Marah, Chief Content Officer and Head of Research, SCM World

Dal-Tile's Collaborative Transportation Program, which won the 2012 Supply Chain Innovation Award, has continued to grow and mature. Sonney Jones, supply chain director at Dal-Tile, provides an update.

Today's shippers are done talking about collaborative freight solutions and are ready to allocate resources to design and implement programs that can scale, says Ben Cubitt, senior vice president for consulting and engineering of Transplace. He describes the role that 3PLs can play in such projects.