The Implementation of Supply Chain Management in the Malaysian Construction Industry

The construction industry has always been an important player in the development of the Malaysian economy in terms of promoting growth. The construction supply chain links within the industry stimulates domestic demand and creates significant effect to the Malaysian economy. Although the construction industry has been contributing significant impact to the development of Malaysian economy, it is facing a difficult task to establish the integration and coordination between parties in the construction supply chain. Thus, as a whole, the performance and the productivity of the construction industry have been reported to be slow and inefficient in comparison to other industries. The implementation of the Construction Industry Master Plan (CIMP 2006-2015) which among others, is to move the Malaysian construction industry further up the value chain through the implementation of Supply Chain Management (SCM) practises. However, only a few empirical researches have been conducted and it is hope this study will contribute to the progress. This paper will present a literature review and results from the analysis of a preliminary survey which was conducted among industry players in Malaysia. The purpose of this paper is to identify the implementation of SCM in the Malaysian construction industry which constitutes the understanding, application and highlighting the issues and problems of SCM in the Malaysian construction industry. The findings show that the level of the understanding among the players is still at the moderate level, even though there is a slight increase in the application of SCM practices. These findings will hopefully become the foundation to further research to form the basis of a valuable framework of SCM to enhance the overall performance and productivity within construction supply chains.