The impact of logistics on the assembly of prefabricated concrete elements

Abstract: Just like all other businesses the construction industry also tries to lower their costs. All of Skanska Stomsystems business is based on transporting prefabricated parts to assembly them in another location. In this case it.s very important to have efficient logistics. How does the logistics from the factory to the construction site work today? Do the trucks arrive in time, are they loaded the right way? Do they contain the right elements? What impact do faults in the logistics have on the use of the assembly crane? What are the costs of a interuption caused by faults in the logistics? These are the questions I am going to try to answer in this report. First I did a pre-study at a construction site to see if I could find out what kind of problems to investigate further. In order to do this I choose to work with the assembly crew to see easier what kind of problems showed up. I soon discovered that there were great faults in the transport system, the trucks were often late and sometimes they didn.t contain the right parts. After my pre-study I continued my work at four other sites in the Gothenburg region to see if the problem with late trucks and wrong contents continued and how it effected the resources at the construction site. The study showed that the logistics did not work as supposed. I spoke with several truck drivers and supervisors on the construction sites and other members of staff involved, and they all confirmed that there were problems in the logistics. There was no one in charge of the logistics at the factory. The assembly crew send the supervisors at the factory a list over which elements to send to the construction site. The only thing done by the supervisors at the factory was to receive the list and write a delivery note. There was no one directly responsible so the logistics would work properly. From many different directions came suggestions that there should be some kind of a transport coordinator at the factory. After reviewing the data from the study the conclusion that to make the logistics work more efficiently the first thing that had to bee done was to get some kind of structure in the factory yard where all the elements were stored. Then I have two alternative suggestions. Either to appoint a transport coordinator with the ability to get a overview of the organization, alternatively to outsource the whole loading responsibility to the transport company Fraktkedjan.