Buyer-supplier relationships in industrialized building

Close collaboration is considered important; but is close collaboration for all purchases necessary to create value-in-production? In construction as well as in other industries, companies purchase a variety of items that require different amounts of attention to the relationship with suppliers. Buyer-supplier relationships are investigated in relation to how they bring value-in-production in the industrialized building sector. An adaptation of the Kraljic model is applied to the context of industrialized housebuilding in Sweden. Different relationships and different purchased items are classified with the aim of revealing patterns that may prove useful when determining purchasing strategies intended to create value-in-production. Purchasing strategies were studied through data collection at four industrialized housebuilders. Analysis of these strategies suggests that the total product offer from suppliers in terms of customization, logistics and standardization plays an important role in the choice of suppliers in order to satisfy the requirement for efficient production. Long-term relationships enable the development of a specific way of working that adds value-in-production. A new purchasing portfolio model for determining the effectiveness of purchasing strategies on the production process is thus presented, where products are classified according to value-in-production.