Evaluating Supplier Management Maturity in Prefabricated Construction Project-Survey Analysis in China

Kangning Liu,Shoujian Zhang,Yikun Su

doi:10.3390/su10093046

Abstract

Prefabrication is considered as a modern method of construction, transferring part of on-site work into factories and generating a new decoupling point in supply chain. Management of prefabricated component (PC) suppliers plays a key role in the performance of prefabricated construction project (PCP). Evaluating and improving supplier management maturity (SMM) become critical issues for large contractors. Previous research on PCP supply chain mainly focused on technology, process and performance aspects, while paying little attention to supplier relationship management. This study proposes an assessment criteria system of supplier management from five dimensions, including procurement process, operation efficiency, relationship coordination and strategy alignment and corporate social responsibility. A maturity grid with five levels is designed to present continuous improvement of supplier management. 34 large PCP construction firms listed in contractor directory were investigated in China through semi-structured interview and questionnaire survey. Independent two-samples t-test and one-way analysis of variance were adopted to explore SMM of different groups according to business scope, procurement method and construction experience. The results indicate that the overall maturity level of supplier management is relatively low, implying that supply activity cannot achieve inter-organization integration. Management on relationship coordination and strategy alignment lag behind procurement management and operation efficiency. Single business contractors have higher SMM than diversified ones. Contractors integrated in engineering, procurement and construction are superior to design-bid-build contractors in supplier management, especially in relationship coordination and strategic alignment. Construction experience is conductive to supplier operation efficiency. Noticeably, there are no statistically significant differences in the performance of corporate social responsibility among different groups. These results will contribute to developing a benchmark framework for contractors to evaluate SMM and achieve continuous improvements in PCP.

Highlights

Prefabrication, is known as off-site construction, modular construction and modern method of construction, transferring part of on-site work into factory which provides a controlled manufacturing environment to produce building components and modules with modularized design and standardized interface [1], has gain more attention among researchers and practitioners
In order to address these challenges, this study provides a glimpse into contractor-supplier bilateral relationship, exploring supplier management maturity (SMM) in prefabricated construction project (PCP)
The highest score comes to “operation efficiency” (F2, 3.41), “purchase process” (F1, 3.37) and “corporate social responsibility” (F5, 3.23) rank in second and third level respectively, the maturity score of “strategy alignment” (F4) is just 2.99 which stands in the lowest level

Summary

Introduction

Prefabrication, is known as off-site construction, modular construction and modern method of construction, transferring part of on-site work into factory which provides a controlled manufacturing environment to produce building components and modules with modularized design and standardized interface [1], has gain more attention among researchers and practitioners. Previous research indicated that poor performance of supply chain management was the main reason for low adoption of prefabricated technology [3,4]. Because on-site and off-site working sites of PCP are broken junction [5], suppliers are often not involved in prefabricated component (PC) design [6], leading to delivery delays, schedule overruns [7], on-site process disorderliness and client demands vagueness [5]. It is imperative to improve supplier management performance in PCP [8]

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion