The type (loose, tight) of the integration forms another critical issue that should be addressed by organisations when taking decisions for integrating their supply chains. Based on these two types of integration supply chain partners can form: (a) loose-coupled training partnerships through which share information or (b) tightly integrated chains where there is a higher degree of process dependency. The differences among the types of integration are well discussed in literature with Themistocleous and Irani [27] summarising these in Table 1.