Envision of an integrated information system for project-driven production in construction

Abstract

Construction frequently appears at the bottom of productivity charts with decreasing indexes of productivity over the years. Lack of innovation and delayed adoption, informal processes or insufficient rigor and consistency in process execution, insufficient knowledge transfer from project to project, weak project monitoring, little cross- functional cooperation, little collaboration with suppliers, conservative company culture, and a shortage of young talent and people development are usual issues. Whereas work has been carried out on information technology and automation in construction their application is isolated without an interconnected information flow. This paper suggests a framework to address production issues on construction by implementing an integrated automatic supervisory control and data acquisition for management and operations. The system is divided into planning, monitoring, controlling, and executing groups clustering technologies to track both the project product and production. This research stands on the four pillars of manufacturing knowledge and lean production (production processes, production management, equipment/tool design, and automated systems and control). The framework offers benefits such as increased information flow, detection and prevention of overburdening equipment or labor (Muri) and production unevenness (Mura), reduction of waste (Muda), evidential and continuous process standardization and improvement, reuse and abstraction of project information across endeavors.