Material Supply Chain in the Construction Industry

Sammanfattning: Purpose The purpose of this study is to understand the reason behind why it occurs a large number of pickups each year in the construction industry. In the case company alone, it occurs 160 000 pickups per year and an estimated loss of 50 MSEK. This thesis will try to investigate and explain why the pickups occur, and also what the underlying factors are that could influence the number of pickups. Methodology The data in the thesis was collected from semi-structured interviews with eight employees within the case company. We chose to interview four employees from the construction department and four employees from the construction service department. The reason to that was that different departments works differently to each other, and we wanted to know what the differences were. The employees all had management or supervisor positions and were based in different geographical areas. In the thesis, we applied a mix of content analysis and grounded analysis method. Findings The findings made during the thesis, were that the different departments work with pickups very differently when comparing to each other, one department had almost all their supplier contact at the beginning of the projects and didn’t require more supplier contact during the production. While the other department, due to their nature required regular supplier interaction which created an increase number of pickups. The main reasons behind the pickups were to inadequate planning and the organizational culture. Conclusion The conclusion provides areas where the company can improve on regarding the pickups and recommendation of how the case company can reduce the number of pickups, based on the gathered data and the theoretical frame of references. The recommendations were: enhance the supplier relationship, re-evaluate the contracts with the suppliers, education regarding planning and work-method.