The supply chain can significantly affect a construction project based on its ability to deliver construction products in an efficient and timely manner. Recently, supply chain management has received a lot of attention from the construction industry ...
The supply chain can significantly affect a construction project based on its ability to deliver construction products in an efficient and timely manner. Recently, supply chain management has received a lot of attention from the construction industry (Min and Bjornsson, 2004). However, due to the long information lead-time and the lack of coordination, the initiated communication often fails to have the required information in a timely manner. To make matters even worse, the communication itself may not be initiated.
Because of the large number of project participants in a construction project: it is an overwhelming task for project managers to cover numerous project members and their suppliers. These types of disturbances in information flows generate turbulences in material flows, which are one of the highly ranked causes of delay in a construction project. Thus, the coordination of information flows is a key component in achieving tight integration in order to optimize the chain-wide performance.
As a way of coordinating information flows, the idea of real-time information sharing has been studied extensively in the manufacturing industry. It specifically emphasizes instantaneous multilateral information sharing within a supply chain in order to reduce uncertainties associated with operations and demand forecast (Cooper et al., 1997; Lewis and
Talalayevsky, 1997). This idea has been facilitated due to the rapid advances in information technology (Lee and Whang, 2000). Information plays a very important role in construction management in various ways. Many researchers emphasized the importance of communication and information exchange between project participants in the material flow control process (Agapiou et al., 1998; Vrijhoef and Koskela, 1999).
In this context, numerous researchers have focused on sharing information in construction supply chain management. Although many studies have shown the various causes of problems in construction supply chain and different approaches to remedy them, it is difficult to find any efforts of describing detailed approaches for securing real-time information in construction supply chain management. A construction supply chain is a dynamic supply chain where the customers’ needs and requirements are continuously changing, as in military logistics (Simon, 2001). In this case, rapid deployment is more important than optimization, and information technology is needed to make information visible in real-time as they occur (Kumar, 2001).
Recently, it is increasing needs for keeping track of external finishing materials from pre-fab in the plant to erecting in the yard, and due to high-risied and complexed building, more sort and the number of materials to be managed are diversified. Therefore, recent management strategy based on human resources and barcode technology is facing certain limitation to resolve this kind of problem.
To resolve these problems, the application of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology which is being able to manage as a managing unit is conducted by researchers and practitioners in construction industry.
Sharing information collected by RFID technology for utilizing in construction supply chain management, Integration technology of Ubiquitous Sensor Network(USN) and RFID is being applied to CSCM.
However, as RFID technology has own characteristics, when the RFID/USN-based equipment tries to loading, redundancy identification problem that recognize an unloaded Material Set was identified in the project “The development of automatic and intelligent system and equipments for Construction Supply Chain Management of the next generation” supervised by Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs.
“Redundancy Identification” is defined as a process generating redundant information through unpredictable fault detection when RFID tags are read. In this research, “Redundancy Identification” is used as the situation that Intelligent Equipments recognize information which is not loaded.
To clarify this problem, this research issues that redundancy identification problem which is a critical problem can be occurred in Future RFID/USN-based CSCM process.
Therefore, the ultimate objective of this research was to develop a redundancy identification problem solving (RPIS) framework for ideal construction supply chain management.
In this research, RIPS framework was developed through the procedures as follows.
(1) Identify optimized solution by case modeling of redundancy identification problems
(2) Development of RIPS algorithm including Re-initialize algorithm and naive algorithm of duplication checking algorithms
(3) Development of Intelligent Equipments such as Intelligent Mover, Intelligent Trailer, GateSensor and Server
(4) Development of Information Model by UML notation
(5) Development of 3-tier-based prototype system such as IM’s UMPC System, IT’s UMPC System, PDA System, Construction supply chain Management System (CMS) System
(6) Development of Process Model by BPMN expression
To validate RIPS framework developed in this research, following three criteria were established for conducting of test.
(1) Is it possible to apply process model based RIPS framework to RFID/USN-based Construction Supply Chain Management Process?
(2) Does RIPS framework solve redundancy identification problems effectively?
(3) Is there quantitative improvement when RIPS framework is applied?
Since this test aims to verify the redundancy identification problem solving feasibility of RIPS framework, during the phase or setting up the test, the test was configured to be performed in case of the redundancy identification problem occurred.
The test was performed as the process model for RIPS framework. Also, a stop watch was used to adopt Time Study Methodology for measuring quantitative assessments. The time was recorded according to conditions whether RIPS framework is used or not. And each case was tested ten times. Also, the person who carries out the process was changed each test to eliminate Learning Effect as much as possible.
The result of the test satisfied above three criteria. Following statements are the result of analysis of time study. It was analyzed a normal distribution curve in MATLAB in order to test the reliability of RIPS framework in this research.
Contrary to opposite case, when it is applied the proposed RIPS framework to RFID/USN-based CSCM, this research proves that the total time can be reduced over 25% at the 99.29% confidence level. When RIPS framework proposed in this study is applied, the total time required to solve the redundancy identification problem at the 92.65% confidence level decrease approximately 70% comparing to the case not to be applied. However, five data were out of range among twenty time results even though it is applied the RIPS framework, because Intelligent Equipments were on the redundancy identification problem context during the re-initializing process. Except these data, it is analyzed that the ideal RIPS framework reduced approximately 88% of the total time required to solve redundancy identification problem at the 100% confidence level.
These results conclude that it takes less total time to solve the redundancy identification problem when it is applied RIPS framework. It takes less time that the RIPS framework detects/solves the redundancy identification, and it means this method is effective to draw accuracy information from the redundancy information.
Also, according to the result of analysis of total time to take Shipping Manager’s contractual inspection which is essential process in CSCM process, in the case of using the RIPS framework, the total time decreased approximately 60% at the 95.15% confidence level compared with the case of not using the RIPS framework.
This proves that the worker’s productivity can be increased when RIPS framework provide the redundancy identification problem context information to Shipping Manager through the PDA. The proposed identification problem solving process has a limitation because the troubleshooting was limited due to the limit of the current RRFID/SUN technologies.
However, this research has significance because it issued the redundancy identification problem on the Future RFID/USN-based CSCM process, reduced the information redundancy on the RFID/USN-based CSCM process, and secured the information constituency and accuracy. This research would contributes to establish the ideal construction supply chain management system by providing consistency and accuracy of the construction information management which is required in construction supply chain management domain getting intelligent.