The World of Ready Mixed Concrete

I´ve collected new pieces to my puzzle of experiences and insights that I am laying during this year as trainee. I´ve gained these new pieces during some weeks in our business area Ready Mixed Concrete earlier this autumn. It is a business area with many different functions, and I have had the opportunity to spend time at most of them, and thereby come to understand how they all are important for our offer.

One can say that I have been following the concrete throughout the different functions and processes. Starting when a customer places an order – throughout our organization – back to the customer in terms of delivery. The period started off with, together with Emilia, Axel, and Maria from our program Young Professionals, meeting the management team and supporting functions of the business area on the national and regional level for presentations and time to ask questions. Then it was time for me to explore the daily operations at the sales department, customer service, the plants, technicians, sampling crew, and delivery.

Briefly, I have been at starting meetings, site visits, educations, tendering, and invoicing together with the sales team. Soon I understood that sales are more than close deals, I would rather call the salespeople for project leaders as they engage in much proactive work, internal and external communication, and information sharing. At customer service, I got an insight into how many parameters you need to manage when receiving orders and planning transports. For instance, how many available trucks there are at each plant at a specific time, the capacity at the plant, when the customer wants the delivery, to what pace the customer wants the deliveries, etc. Furthermore, I spent a few days at two of our factories and got insights into the workday and process of producing ready mixed concrete. Also, I have spent time with the technicians who work as a supporting function to the production, dealing with most things from raw materials to adjusting concrete recipes. I was mostly involved in adjusting concrete recipes. In addition, I had the opportunity to follow the sampling crew to different construction sites where we took different samples of the delivered concrete to make sure it met the requirements. Mostly, we were taking so called cubes (which later are used to test the strength of the concrete), checking the concrete´s proportion of air, and the concrete´s consistency. During the week I also joined the delivery crew and delivered concrete by two types of delivery trucks.
      
During the section, I also got the opportunity to visit Örebro to meet the team working there and get a guided tour of the Örebro factory. Then I continued the trip to Stockholm for a few days together with the sales team in the Stockholm region. Also, I had time to visit our office in central Stockholm and attend an event with a supplier. It was good days, and it was interesting to see how we are working in different geographical areas.

To conclude, it has been fun and fruitful weeks. I have got the opportunity to meet many fantastic people who all have welcomed me and gladly shared their workdays, experiences, and thoughts. Also, I have had a bunch of aha experiences. The weight of concrete is crazy, it is so heavy! Earlier I read about it theoretically and people have explained it to me – but when I carried some buckets full of concrete it hit me and I understood for real…

See you!