The construction material supplier relationship manangement

Abstract

The Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) has become a key strategy for companies to achieve competitive advantage by increasing production efficiency and reducing costs. This article presents a study on the field of the construction material supplier relationship management, more specifically at the retail segment of this industry. The research was conducted focused on the selection and evaluation variables of these actors and their relationship with the partners in the chain. In this sense, a survey was carried out by applying a questionnaire among those companies between January and May 2015. The study found that the enterprises interviewed use, mainly, the empirical knowledge of their owners to carry out their supplier management activities, being market price the most frequently used variable as a criterion for their decision making process. However, in some segments of this sector, there is already an advance in the application of proven supplier selection and development techniques as the multivariable approach.