The role of coordination in avoiding project delays in an engineer-to-order supply chain

Purpose - ETO supply chains produce high-value products on a project basis. The occurrence of delays is a major problem that impacts the performance of a company and its supply chain. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the cause of delays and to understand the role of coordination to mitigate them. Design/methodology/approach - An in-depth case study was conducted to identify problems that delay a project and to examine such problems from a systemic perspective. Based on data from interviews, group meetings, field observations and documentation, a pattern is proposed to explain the relation between coordination and lead time. Findings - Conceptually, to reduce the project lead time a higher level of concurrency is necessary. However, more concurrency increases the interdependencies between activities, something which demands more coordination effort. Since the coordination mechanisms applied are not appropriate to cope with the increasing coordination effort, a number of problems appear causing reworks and delays which increase the lead time. Research limitations/implications - The main limitation is that the authors are not able to distinguish which particular project characteristic influences the adoption of a specific coordination mechanism. Further research is required to examine the effect of various coordination mechanisms across a higher number of projects. Practical implications - Practitioners can benefit from discussions in this study to comprehend how coordination can improve the delivery performance in ETO supply chains. Originality/value - This study contributes to a better understanding of coordination in ETO supply chains by making sense of problems that delay the project. Matching the coordination mechanisms with the required coordination effort, which is based on the project characteristics, is a way to avoid delays and reduce the lead time.