One of the fundamental problems in supply chain management in general is that of finding the right trade-offs between information sharing and keeping one’s distance towards potential competitors.
Zeng et al. did a literature review to collect some of the current insights on how to solve this problem.
There are many obstacles to information sharing in a supply chain. Confidentiality is probably one of the biggest issues, but there are others not so obvious like antitrust regulations, the timeliness and accuracy of the provided information, differing technologies between the supply chain partners or a mismatch in the alignment of incentives. Therefore trust and cooperation become critical ingredients in a supply chain partnership.