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

Project description

Supply chain management 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 lean principles, digital technologies, and intelligent algorithms to manage the supply chains. A wonderful future of supply chain practice in construction projects will be achieved by systematically integrating the three aspects to enable digital supply chain coordination, ensuring that there is fast and failure free information exchanged between partners. Such a systematic approach has been developed by the doctoral researcher Qian Chen for the supply chain management of different material types for construction projects. The research was conducted in collaboration with Waterloo University, New York University Abu Dhabi and has based on real-world case studies from Implenia Construction Company in Switzerland, over a four-year period (2016 to 2020).

• For the Engineer-to-order type of materials, given their high design complexity, a lean work flow and a supporting IT framework were developed that links the use of BIM and RFID technologies with look-ahead plans to better manage the production, delivery and use of the components to be used on site. This approach and its implementation is the first time that lean and digital tools have been used together in a common data environment to focus on supply chain integration.

• For the bulk materials, given their high volatility of demand, an intelligent two-step approach that uses digitized information within a short-term planning window was developed to improve the ordering and allocation of concrete by minimizing waste and cost. Either within a single or among multiple projects, the implementation of the intelligent approach proved the benefits of balancing the daily material supply and demand.

In both material context, the integration of lean principles, digital technologies, and intelligent algorithms was well demonstrated to improve supply chain efficiency, agility and sustainability, paving the way for a better future of construction projects. The systematic approach could also be easily scaled to further include a block-chain based smart contractual framework and to move towards a construction circular economy.

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