When I was working for a manufacturer of electronic goods we addressed a problem of acquiring a particular part from a specific supplier. We did a lot of business with this supplier, but this one part in particular was frequently backordered and this impacted our production schedule. Other suppliers were investigated, but their cost was significantly more than our regular supplier.
Working with the supplier we discovered that their lead-time to produce this part depended on their ability to obtain the necessary raw materials. To help the supplier better plan their raw material inventory, we decided to share our sales forecast data. Sales forecasts are normally highly confidential. But, taking the sales forecast data and applying the Bill of Material information for that part, we only gave the vendor our forecast for that particular part. This kept our sales forecast confidential, while giving our supplier the information they needed to provide us with the parts we needed, when we needed them. Problem solved.