CHALLENGES OF SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT PRACTICESIN PRIVATE ROAD CONSTRUCTION FIRMS IN ETHIOPIA

Abstract

The road construction sector plays a key role in the developmental agenda of a nation by providing transportation services to the various sectors of the economy. Supply chain management has become a fundamental element in the construction industry to improve the efficiency and productivity in recent decades. However, the road sector has encountered series of problems in its quest to deliver road infrastructure and projects have been unduly delayed as a result of poor management of the supply chain system in the sector. In this light, this study was intended to explore challenges of supply chain management in road construction in order to enhance project delivery performance and the study was guided by seven objectives. Which were to examine internal operation, to determine the approaches in information sharing practice, to explore the existing information technology usage, to evaluate the training practice, to examine the extent of supply chain integration, to assess the impact of supply chain management practices and to identify the challenges of supply chain management of Ethiopian private domestic road construction companies. For achieving the objective of this study, 62 questionnaires were distributed and 51 of them were successfully completed and analyzed using descriptive and inferential methods. Only primary source of data were used for this Study and both quantitative and qualitative approaches were adopted in its conduct by using survey questionnaire and interview as the main data collection instrument. The statistical package for social science was used to package the raw data which paved the way for statistical analysis using tools such as correlation, multiple regression and descriptive statistics comprising of mean and standard deviation. The questionnaire was rated using five points liker Scale. The major findings indicate that, most of supply chain management practices are moderately practiced with in the Ethiopian road construction companies supply chain, whereas supply chain integration and training Practices are poorly applied. Unplanned orders financial Impact, Subsequent design change, inventory fluctuation and employee ineffectiveness are major challenges of the companies supply chain. The Study helps to create awareness to studied companies owners, and it will give chance for others who are interested on supply chain practice and challenges to make further studies