ERP Application of Real-Time VDC-Enabled Last Planner System for Planning Reliability Improvement

The Last Planner System (LPS) has since its introduction in 1994 become a widely used method of AEC practitioners for improvement of planning reliability and tracking and monitoring of project progress. However, the observations presented in this paper indicate that the last planners and coordinators are in need of a new system that integrates the existing LPS with Virtual Design and Construction (VDC), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, and automatic object identification by means of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology. This is because current practice of the LPS implementations is guesswork-driven, textual report-generated, hand-updated, and even interpersonal trust-oriented, resulting in less accurate and reliable plans. This research introduces a prototype development of the VREL (VDC + RFID + ERP + LPS) integration to generate a real-time updated cost + physical % complete based weekly work plan and look ahead plan with product progress visualization based on programming intelligence. VREL allows LPS users to enable real-time information generating/sharing, more accurate and reliable planning, immediate proactive action execution, machine-to-machine process, and clear progress understanding by product visualization.