Root Cause Analysis on Inefficiencies in Road Haulage: Case Studies from Sweden, Switzerland and Germany

Road haulage operations and in particular distribution in general, are inefficient. Given the societal importance of road haulage and the low efficiency of the sector, road hauliers need to improve their operations and systematically tackle inefficiencies. However, real causes of these inefficiencies (“root causes”) have not been sufficiently examined in previous studies. This paper aims at expanding prior research by developing a novel framework and to explore inefficiencies and enable systematic improvements in road transport operations. Our research is based on a lean approach and we develop a root cause model with a transport operations focus. The model was tested in three case studies in Sweden, Switzerland and Germany within road transport companies. Based on the findings from this multiple case study among hauliers in different European countries, we propose a framework shown as a matrix based on supply chain processes and categories of an Ishikawa diagram to identify root causes of inefficiencies in transport with influence on transport performance.