Tuesday’s Keynote Address, “Innovation in Relationships Between Coatings Companies, Suppliers and Co-Suppliers,” will be delivered by Dr. Richard Jenkins, Global Group President, Arkema Coating Resins. Recent trends in the chemical industry have been towards consolidation, less upstream flexibility, more frequent and unexpected raw material shortages, more constrained carrier capacity, and increased demand volatility. The consequences of such forces on planning and operating a reliable supply chain can no longer be affordably mitigated through an inventory-only approach. Rather, coping with such pressures has led to innovation in relationships between suppliers, cosuppliers and downstream customers. Such innovation can take many forms: not only in better product technology and resultant formulations, but also increased intimacy between companies via relationships across multiple functions and hierarchical levels. Operationally this means evolving from a classical buy-sell relationship across a firewall towards collaborative problem-solving by knowledgeable experts in real time in the right operational roles when life does not materialize as anticipated. A case study illustrating the improved reliability and mutual value creation of such innovation will be presented.