Urban Consolidation and Logistics Pooling - Sustainable Urban Logistics: Concepts, Methods and Information Systems - page 193

when focusing on distribution, we can distinguish two main domains of applica-
tion: the activities complementary to transportation, for example, warehousing or
supplying, and the transportation itself. We will briefly describe the main orga-
nizational models of sharing in both fields. Since the Anglo-Saxon definition of
vertical and horizontal structures of supply chains (Lambert et al. 1998 ) differs
from the French vision (Becker 2003 ) and does not define the same terms, we will
use the terms of longitudinal and transversal collaboration. 2 Longitudinal collab-
oration is defined by Becker ( 2003 ) as the common process management in a
supply chain by sharing complementary knowledge and resources in order to
efficiently use synergies for planning, deployment, operation follow-up and con-
trol. In longitudinal collaboration, three main schemes can be found:
Efficient Consumer Response (ECR) can be defined as a cooperative approach
whose goal is the total satisfaction of the consumer by an improvement of the
economic performance of the different actors within the supply chain. The ECR
optimizes the retailer's supply service and improves both promotional actions and
freight availability (Gonzalez-Feliu and Morana 2011 ). In its first phase (Best
Practices Efficient Replenishment), the ECR allows automating the supply chain
links and consequently the reduces costs related to manual ordering and invoicing,
and in a second phase (Efficient Replenishment), the integration of all processes in
a unique furnishing-distribution supply chain for optimized sales forecasting and
common transport management (La Londe and Pohlen 1996 ).
The Vendor Management Inventory (VMI) can be considered as the next step
relating to the ECR (Roy et al. 2006 ). In this collaborative approach, the supplier is
jointly responsible for warehouse replenishment by using the sales forecasts,
which involves collaborative actions. This approach implies a commitment of the
distribution company to give real-time information to the producer, who will be
able to make a re-supply proposal and then make their demand forecasts in order to
adapt their production phases and their resources for these phases (Waller et al.
1999 ). Often considered as the continuity of VMI (Evrard Samuel and Spalanzani
2009 ), Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment (CPFR) emerged at
the end of the 1990s. Verity ( 1996 ) reports the initiative of Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
and Warner-Lambert Co., which obtained significant stock management
improvements through this practice. Since 198, 3 this approach has been extended
to many fields, becoming one of the main pillars of the supplier-distributer-retailer
relationship.
A new form of VMI, which can be called ''shared VMI'', has been developed in
the UK and France, and involves several producers which agree to work with the
same distribution company and share information (Simonot and Roure 2007 ).
2 Becker ( 2003 ), Gonzalez-Feliu et al. ( 2010 ) and other French authors refer to it as vertical and
horizontal collaboration, according to the French notation which is different from the USA
definitions of vertical and horizontal structure of Supply Chains (Lambert, 2008 ). For this reason,
we prefer to unify both notations using the longitudinal and transversal notions.
3 In 1998, the Voluntary Inter-Industry Commerce Standards committee (VICS) published the
VICS CPFR Guidelines, available online at: http://www.vics.org/committees/cpfr/ .