I know of no examples of this stage in the electronics industry. Any supply chain will perform at the level of its least developed participants. These companies, without the ability or perhaps willingness to develop channel-compatible supply chain strategies, are bottlenecks and compensating for them has significant cost to the channel in terms of the misuse of resources. The electronics industry is stuck in Stage 2 because of these bottlenecks. Moving beyond supply chain management requires collaboration, and collaboration requires shared plans and trust.
Collaboration drives parity in the channel and tends to generate self-sustained improvement.
Ultimately, visionary leaders in the supply chain will share their road maps and synchronize them with the rest of the channel. Leaders among partners and suppliers will develop independent complementary road maps that not only support their partners' but also create new business dynamics protecting their business initiatives. Those without a road map will, by definition, not be part of the plan and therefore will not be part of the solution. Sun Microsystems is one such leader. The company consistently involves its suppliers in planning and implementing supply chain architecture, and has built trusting relationships through collaboration.