Developing a Decision-making Framework for Supply Chain Network Reconfiguration - A Case Study at Lindab

Sammanfattning: Title: Developing a Supply Chain Management Framework for Decision-making: A Case Study at Lindab Authors: Michelle Jasinski and Louise Skaarup Johansen Problem formulation: Taking decisions to facilitate an efficient supply chain could be difficult and include many parameters. As an international company, Lindab has a well-developed and rather complex supply chain network. However, in Lindab’s current production- and distribution network resources are not used in an optimal way and Lindab does not known which decisions makes the optimal solution. In addition, it is not clear how different parameters are affected by changing the supply chain. To manage this issue and enable easier decision making regarding how to set up the supply chain, Lindab wishes to develop a decision-making tool for different parameters in the supply chain network, which in the future should contribute to the creation of a digital twin of their supply chain network. Purpose: The purpose of the thesis is to build a framework which contributes as a decision-making tool for evaluating different parameters of flow within production and distribution at Lindab. Research Questions: RQ1: How is Lindab’s current supply chain network designed?, RQ2: What parameters should be included in the framework for decision-making?, RQ3: How do different parameters drive the design and redesign of the supply chain at Lindab? Methodology: As the thesis is of exploratory nature, with the purpose of understanding which parameters that should be included in the framework, the selected research strategy was a case study. By doing a case study, the phenomenon was investigated within its real-world context by being done in Lindab’s natural setting, including interviews, current data, and documents. In exploratory studies, both quantitative and qualitative data can be gathered, whereas qualitative data is predominated in this study. Conclusion: Lindab has a well-established supply chain network in Europe, with central production in both Sweden and Czech Republic. The network is further divided into both four sales region and corresponding unit categories. Hence, a rather complex supply chain network, with many different interlinks. Through both conceptual literature research and industry research it was learned that the parameters important for decision making, was the parameters: Costs, Country specific, Customer service, Efficiency, Health & Safety, Investments, Legal & Political, Measuring, Productivity, Products, Resilience, Savings, and Sustainability. These contributed to the development of the framework consisting of the parameters and a corresponding phase for both quantifiable and non-quantifiable parameters. Further through testing, it was shown that the parameters in majority driving network redesign was the quantifiable, specifically parameters representing financials (costs, savings etc.), rather than customer service, sustainability, health & safety etc., even though they were just as represented by data availability. Hence, an indication of a pattern for redesigns solutions still highly dependable upon the historical approach of costs rather than several data driven parameters.