33rd Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC 33) - Osaka and Kyoto, Japan - 2025

https://doi.org/10.24928/2025/0206

Reliable Delivery Order for Improving Workflow in the Construction Supply Chain

Yong-Woo Kim1 & Glenn Ballard2

1Professor, Department of Construction Management, University of Washington, Seattle, USA, [email protected], https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7020-0700
2Research Associate, Project Production Systems Laboratory (P2SL), University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA, [email protected], orcid.org/0000-0002-0948-8861

Abstract

Achieving reliable workflow on-site has long been a priority in the lean construction community, particularly as construction projects become more complex and uncertain. A reliable supply chain between an external supplier and on-site contractor becomes even more critical to project success as the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry increasingly adopts prefabrication and off-site construction. This paper addresses the increasing need for a reliable supply chain by focusing on ensuring the reliability of delivery orders. Recent studies on construction supply chains have attested that demand uncertainty leads to diminished reliability in the product flow of the supply chain, more so when external suppliers are not shielded against the uncertainty in the delivery due date. This paper introduces a systematic approach to enhancing delivery order reliability by applying the Last Planner to the order-releasing process. In this paper, we present a set of strategies to improve delivery order reliability, including organizational and contractual structures at the organizational level, supplier involvement in construction scheduling at the project level, and ensuring high-quality delivery orders at the process level. Moreover, we introduce three key quality criteria to enhance delivery order reliability as well as a set of metrics to measure delivery order reliability effectively, specifically DOR(%) and DOR(Δ) as a probabilistic distribution.

Keywords

Supply chain management, Reliable Delivery Order, The Last Planner System, information flow, and production flow

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Reference in APA 7th edition format:

Kim, Y. & Ballard, G.. (2025). Reliable Delivery Order for Improving Workflow in the Construction Supply Chain. In Seppänen, O., Koskela, L., & Murata , K. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC 33) (pp. 48–58). https://doi.org/10.24928/2025/0206

Shortened reference for use in IGLC papers:

Kim, Y. & Ballard, G.. (2025). Reliable Delivery Order for Improving Workflow in the Construction Supply Chain. IGLC33. https://doi.org/10.24928/2025/0206

 

Founded in 1993, the IGLC is an international network of researchers from practice and academia in architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) who feel that the practice, education, and research of the AEC industry have to be radically renewed in order to respond to the global challenges ahead.

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