Process Connectors: Supporting Information Transactions Between Residential Construction Processes

近年来，住宅建筑业发生了显着变化，但参与者之间的信息传递相对保持不变。大多数建筑商现在与一个由供应商和分包商组成的大型团队合作完成施工。参与者人数增加(以及相关的复杂程度变化)的结果是在沟通和协调方面出现了重大失误。这种分散的程度也使得利用现有技术实施IT支持变得困难。因此，许多协调任务和数据共享仍然用纸质文件手工完成。美国住房和城市发展部进行的研究已经很好地记录了这种人工过程在时间、错误和返工方面的成本。针对这些结构和信息问题，本提案确定了开发流程连接器，以提高非常复杂的供应链和安装链的所有参与者的信息可用性和适用性。流程连接器将驻留在一家公司的流程和数据与另一家公司的流程和数据链接起来。它提供了一种明确的方式来表达关于公司内部流程的信息。这使行业参与者能够了解其他参与者需要从他们那里获得什么信息，以及其他参与者如何使用这些信息。该项目的目标是生成必要的理论和理解，以便在住宅建筑行业中快速和一致地生成过程连接件。特定的可交付内容是行业基础类的扩展和元扩展，以支持流程连接以及一系列文档化的测试用例。为了指导开发和测试，研究团队将在整个项目期间与住宅建筑行业合作。与产业界的合作提供了有针对性的机会，以促进赠款的教育目标，使学生参与研究，并为课堂教学制定范例和系统。这项研究预计将具有广泛的意义，因为许多相互作用的过程的管理是住房建设最具挑战性和最昂贵的方面之一。对每年3200亿美元的住宅建筑业的潜在贡献是巨大的，即使这项工作只取得了部分成功。此外，住宅项目的信息管理挑战代表了其他领域的挑战(例如，其他AEC项目、造船、定制制造等)。因此，提出的项目承诺发展重大的理论和理解，适用于许多行业的过程协调挑战。

The residential construction industry has changed markedly in recent years yet the information transfer between in participants has remained relatively unchanged. Most builders now work with a large team of suppliers and subcontractors to accomplish construction. The result of the increased number of participants (and associated variation in sophistication) has been significant lapses in communication and coordination. The degree of fragmentation also makes implementation of IT support difficult with existing technologies. Hence much of the coordination tasks and data sharing continues to be performed manually with paper documents. The cost of such manual processes in terms of time, errors, and rework has been well documented by studies undertaken by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. In response to these structural and information issues, this proposal identifies the development of process connectors to increase information usability and applicability to all participants of what is a very complex supply and installation chain. A process connector links processes and data resident in one firm with processes and data in another firm. It provides an explicit way of articulating information about a firm's internal processes. This allows industry participants to understand what information other participants require from them and how other participants use that information. The project objectives are to generate the necessary theory and understandings to enable the rapid and consistent generation of process connectors in the residential construction industry. Specific deliverables are an extension and meta-extension of the Industry Foundation Classes to support process connection as well as a series of documented test cases. To guide the development and testing the research team will collaborate with the residential construction industry throughout the project. Collaboration with industry provides directed opportunities to foster the educational objectives of the grant to involve students in the research and to develop examples and systems for classroom pedagogy. The research is expected to be of broad significance as management of many interacting processes is one of the most challenging and expensive aspects of housing construction. The potential contributions to the annual $320 billion residential construction industry are large even if the work is only partially successful. Further, the information management challenges of residential projects are representative of challenges in other domains (e.g., other AEC projects, shipbuilding, custom manufacturing, etc.). Hence the proposed project promises development of significant theory and understandings applicable process coordination challenges in0333528 many industries.