Originally Posted by
racedo
Thats where the good old contract and service level agreements come in.
Supplier responsible for holding stock ........end of story.
That is a solution but merely shifts the cost of holding from one end of the chain to the other.
A supplier will only maintain a given stock level of widgets if he is paid to do so. He might have won a contract to maintain a stock of 1000 widgets with a requirement to replace widgets with t-time of consumption.
That contract will cost money, potentially more than holding sufficient stock in-house.