In order to tackle these problems caused by poor information management, this research proposes a low-cost solution that provides the right information at the right time to the right users. More specifically,this research will develop a cost-effective materials management and tracking system using the state-of-art information technology (IT),i.e., cloud computing and RFID, and study its feasibility for the SMB to improve their current workflow through increased supply chain visibility.
Cloud computing and RFID have been gaining great attention by manufacturing and production industry for their supply chain management owing to their capabilities to enhance supply chain visibility while reducing operation and maintenance costs [5–7].
The proposed system is developed to
- automate data collection and provide real-time visibility in the construction chain;
- provide accurate information in a timely manner to avoid the bottleneck in information flow among the participants in the
chain; and
- improve communication and coordination between SMB contractors and their project teams using user friendly interfaces at low cost and maintenance requirements.
To this end, this research is designed with the following components:
1) workflow analysis and requirement analysis to enhance the current workflow;
2) prototype system development with cloud computingand RFID;
3) discrete event simulation to estimate the performance of the proposed system in the complex settings; and 4) statistical analyses to test the system in the field. The system is developed and tested with the SMB contractor to track their duct and pipe spools from design release to fabrication and to installation.
The paper is organized as follows.
Section 2 presents the literature review. Section 3 describes the current workflow in the studied SMB as well as recommendations to improveit. Section 4 analyzes the requirements for the system to improve the cur-
rent workflow. Section 5 describes the developed system and its architecture. Section 6 presents the discrete event simulation and field tests to evaluate the performance of the proposed system. Section 7 concludes this paper with research findings and potential future works.