A service oriented framework for construction supply chain integration

The benefits of integrating and coordinating supply chain partners have been well recognized in many industries. In the construction industry, supply chain integration is technically challenging due to the high fragmentation of the industry. Information, applications, and services are loosely distributed among participants with a wide range of hardware and software capabilities. In addition, participants are often unwilling to share information because the temporary nature of construction projects often impedes the establishment of trust. A secure, modular, and flexible system that can aggregate scattered information and share that information across applications is, therefore, highly desirable. We have prototyped a service oriented, web-based system that can provide both these capabilities. Called the SC Collaborator, this system facilitates the flexible coordination of construction supply chains by leveraging web services, web portal, and open source technologies. These technologies enable the SC Collaborator system to provide an economical and customizable tool for integrating supply chain partners with a wide range of computing capabilities. This paper describes the overall architecture and the features of the system. Two example scenarios are included to demonstrate the potential of SC Collaborator in integrating and managing information from project partners. The first scenario is an e-Procurement example whereas the second is a rescheduling scenario based on the data from a completed project in Sweden. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.