A systematic approach to enabling digital supply chain coordination in construction projects

Abstract

Supply chain management plays a fundamental role in running a successful construction project to ensure cost-efficient, accurate, and on-time material delivery to construction sites. Supply chain management has been favored by researchers and construction practitioners over traditional material management practices that focus on a single logistic perspective. It can be used to manage interdependent project phases and improve stakeholder relationships. Although supply chain management helps stakeholders complete construction projects, the problems associated with material flow processes, such as material delays, rework, and incorrect deliveries remain frequent due to a lack of efficient supply chain integration and coordination. As a result, projects often face schedule delays and cost overruns. To keep construction projects on time and on budget, novel methodologies are needed for the management of material flow processes. Good management of material flow processes requires efficient coordination of material and associated information flows, which leads to reduced misalignment in deliveries. Responses to this need often focus on the use of advanced management principles, technologies, and intelligent algorithms to manage the supply chains. Lean management principles and Industry 4.0 technologies combined with various optimization algorithms have dominated manufacturing supply chains in the past decade and have the potential to enhance stakeholder collaboration and workflow efficiency. The supply chain processes in construction projects are normally dynamic in nature and are subjected to open-air environmental conditions. This adds considerable uncertainties to the management of material flows from the planning phase to the installation phase, in contrast to the manufacturing processes that happen in a closed and consistent work environment. Data silos further limit the capabilities of construction stakeholders to collaborate and inhibit the reliability of their decisions on material supplies and demands. To overcome the challenges and limitations, prevailing principles and methods in manufacturing industry are required to address the needs of construction supply chains. In pursuit of this, the dissertation aims to \textit{develop a systematic approach and the corresponding techniques to improve the coordination of material and information flows in construction projects, considering the integration of lean workflows, digital technologies, and optimization algorithms, with a special focus on stakeholders’ collaborative decision-making processes}. The first part of the dissertation focuses on the comprehensive review of contemporary supply chain management in construction projects. Various methods that facilitate construction supply chain coordination are identified through different review processes. One review is conducted to develop an objective and data-driven assessment of the use of automation and digital technologies to provide a better understanding of their potential benefits and limitations. The other review summarizes useful enablers to facilitate the coordination activities and to link different construction supply chain stages (i.e., design-to-production, production-to-logistics, and production-to-site-assembly). Results from both reviews suggest that a holistic integration of the supply chains and stakeholders’ collaborative decision making through digitalization (e.g., integrated BIM-IoT technologies) together with and lean workflows are essential to improve supply chain coordination but are missing from current practices. This part lays the knowledge foundation for the second and third parts of the dissertation. The second part of the dissertation explores the combination of lean principles and digital technologies; namely, lean workflows with integrated management systems. The lean workflow is designed to link digital information on material demands with look-ahead plans. This is illustrated in the material flow processes for the erection of an office building with prefabricated columns. The performance of the lean workflow is compared with that of a traditional workflow using discrete-event simulations. The lean workflow advances the traditional workflow as it allows project participants to combine detailed look-ahead plans with BIM and RFID technologies to better manage material flow processes. It is particularly useful for the management of engineer-to-order components considering dynamic site progress. To embed the lean workflow in a digital platform, an integrated management system is developed that focuses on the communication of design-change and schedule-change information. The system includes design-change, schedule-change, production, and transport functional modules. Project stakeholders can prevent material flows from the negative impact of late change using the system to digitally support the lean workflow. The system uses a client-server architecture, though it can be easily reconfigured to a cloud-based system architecture. The capability of the system to improve the coordination of changes over an engineer-to-order material flow process simulation of the office building project is demonstrated to be superior than that of the traditional management framework. This work represents the first instance where detailed look-ahead plans, BIM, RFID, and a common data environment are integrated in supply chain collaboration to replace otherwise ad-hoc procedures. The third part of the dissertation moves the focus to the management of bulk commodity. This part explores the combination of lean principles, digital technologies, and optimization algorithms to improve stakeholders’ decision-making processes in the coordination of material flows. This part selects ready-mix concrete as a representative type of bulk commodity to study this dynamic. Given the fluctuating demand for concrete, an approach that uses digitized information within a short-term planning window is presented to improve the ordering of concrete by minimizing waste and cost. The approach consists of two main steps that contractors should take: 1) monitoring the dynamic demand fluctuations using a 4D model that captures the as-built site progress and updated look-ahead schedules, 2) modifying original orders to accommodate the demand fluctuations where quantities of additional orders and outsourced orders are determined by a heuristic evolutionary algorithm. The proposed approach is demonstrated to be useful to provide optimal order quantities of concrete with minimal costs within a five-day planning window. The scope of implementing the approach is expanded from a single project to a group of projects in a contractor’s or owner’s broader portfolio. To optimize the allocation of materials among multiple projects, a transshipment method is developed to enable the lateral sharing of materials in a supply chain network using the same two-step approach; a streamlined coordination process comprising the extraction of digital information and the decision-making on material allocation. To accommodate the expansion of the approach to varied material demands among projects, a network model is required to simulate the material and information flows from one project to another. Either within or among projects, the implementation of the two-step approach in both cases proves the benefits of balancing the daily material supply and demand according to a continuously updated schedule. As a result, the materials can be managed with minimal waste and costs. This dissertation contributes to the field of construction management of material flow processes by providing a systematic approach and corresponding techniques to address the challenges in construction supply chain processes. More precisely, it provides a novel method for integrating lean principles, digital technologies, and optimization algorithms for construction supply chain practices. The proposed approach improves supply chain efficiency, transparency, agility, sustainability, and accuracy, paving the way for a better future of construction projects.