Developing a Resource Supply Chain Planning System for Construction Projects
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Volume 132, Issue 4
Abstract
The high variability of construction environments results in high construction-cost variation, especially in material costs. Inadequate planning may cause material shortages that delay the project schedule or, alternatively, a substantial increase in inventory costs by producing or supplying materials earlier than they are needed at the construction site. In order to solve these problems, this paper studies steel rebar production and supply operations and establishes an optimal model that minimizes the integrated inventory cost of the supply chain. Based on the optimal model, this paper develops a decision-support system to generate a production and supply plan for a supplier and buyers of steel rebar. After utilizing the decision-support system to create the supply and production plan, this paper analyzes the results to study the influence of transaction constraints on inventory cost. This paper also discusses cases of global optimization of the inventory cost for the entire supply chain and compares them with cases of local optimization for individual members.
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Acknowledgments
The writers would like to thank the National Science Council, Taiwan, for financially supporting this research under Contract No. NSC-93-2211-E002-057. The writers are grateful to Ruentex Group and Mr. Hung-His Hsu, for their kind support in providing data for the illustrative example and for contributing to our research discussions.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 132 • Issue 4 • April 2006
Pages: 393 - 407
Copyright
© 2006 ASCE.
History
Received: Nov 30, 2004
Accepted: Jul 5, 2005
Published online: Apr 1, 2006
Published in print: Apr 2006
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