Web-Services Environment for Collaborative Management of Product Life-Cycle Costs
Publication: Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 132, Issue 3
Abstract
There is an increasing need for effective tools for managing life cycle costs (LCC) of civil products. This paper presents a web-based semantic system for managing products’ life cycle costs. The basic architecture of the proposed system represents costs as a hierarchy of cost elements. Each cost element has a dollar value that could be deterministic, probabilistic, or fuzzy. Several factors (also represented in hierarchies) can have a set of impacts on the values of these costs. Through the analysis of different impact possibilities and probabilities, a decision maker can study various alternative scenarios and define the optimum set of costs and their values. A set of web services are used to capture cost elements, factors, and their impacts. The semantic nature of the system allows for it to be an integral part of a corporate memory system, where decision makers will be able to document and access lessons learned about LCC optimization. Finally, the proposed system includes a framework for a LCC-centered supply chain, where all stakeholders can collaborate in optimizing product LCC.
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Acknowledgments
The writer would like to thank graduate and undergraduate students at the Centre for Information Systems in Infrastructure and Construction (I2C) at the University of Toronto for their support in the area of programming and for their input in the development of the case study.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 132 • Issue 3 • March 2006
Pages: 300 - 313
Copyright
© 2006 ASCE.
History
Received: Feb 24, 2005
Accepted: Jul 28, 2005
Published online: Mar 1, 2006
Published in print: Mar 2006
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