Reusing waste materials of other industries, a practice known as industrial symbiosis, attracts growing attention by industry. However, the waste materials are often of lower quality than the virgin materials they substitute. When production processes are intolerant for lower quality materials, production issues may occur. This paper sets out to explore how firms can manage the waste quality through supplier integration with the waste supplier. As suppliers have to learn new knowledge, the construct of absorptive capacity is used as an interpretive lens. An in-depth longitudinal exploratory case study approach is used to examine the involvement of different individuals and departments in the supplier integration activities in the context of the waste-based fuel supply chain of a global cement producer. Qualitative and quantitative data was gathered at both the buyer and the supplier. The data show that buyers can increase the absorptive capacity of the suppliers by aligning their own knowledge bases with the scope of the supplier integration. The increased absorptive capacity enables the suppliers to align waste quality with production requirements. Managing waste quality is an important capability of industrial symbiosis, especially when firms want to go beyond the low-hanging fruits and increase the effectiveness of their industrial symbiosis activities. The research concludes with theoretical and managerial insights into how firms can organize the supplier integration to manage waste quality in the context of industrial symbiosis.

Introduction

This research takes its outset in a real-life case that the authors encountered during a research project at a cement manufacturer who is deeply engaged in industrial symbiosis e i.e. the practice of using waste and byproducts of other industries. After having captured the low-hanging fruits, the cement manufacturer aimed to increase the volume and the scope of their symbiotic activities. However, to maintain high final product quality and high operational efficiency in a production environment which is designed and optimized for the use of virgin materials, the waste products need to conform to exacting quality standards. To manage the until now poor and varying quality of the waste, the cement manufacturer engaged in supplier integration (SI): the exchange of information by means of reports, calls and e-mails as well as visits to each other. The SI intended to align the quality of waste with the production requirements. However, the SI did not give the intended result, even though supply chain literature suggests a positive relationship between SI and supplier performance (Frohlich and Westbrook, 2001) such as the quality of the materials delivered by the supplier (Huo et al., 2019). Instead, the supplier indicated not to understand how to align the waste quality with the production requirements. Yet, SI is considered important in the context of industrial symbiosis (Zeng et al., 2017) and the wider field of the circular economy (Masi et al., 2018).