Visualizing Construction Supply Chains with Google Cloud Computing Tools

There is an increasing awareness of the importance of supply chain management to the performance of construction projects in the construction industry. Project delays, disruption of site work flows, and elevated carbon footprint are common consequences of poor supply chain management. Information technology solutions, such as enterprise resource planning systems, are widely used in the manufacturing industry for managing supply chains. However, in the construction industry, only a few large construction firms can afford to deploy such sophisticated IT tools. The majority of the firms in the construction industry are small to medium size companies, and they don't have resources and manpower to use and maintain proprietary supply chain management solutions. This research explored freely available Google cloud computing tools, including Google Fusion Table (GFT), Google Maps, and Google Earth, as a potential cloud-based supply chain management platform. The focus of this research is on the capability of the proposed platform on providing mechanisms for online information exchange, multi-party collaboration, real-time supply demand update, and supply chain data visualization. Experiments were conducted on a campus building project. The results suggest that the proposed platform provides the basic functionalities for developing a cost-effective tool for small and medium size construction firms to manage supply chain data.