Process Connectors: Supporting Information Transactions Between Residential Construction Processes

近年来，住宅建筑行业发生了显著变化，但参与者之间的信息传递却相对保持不变。大多数建筑商现在都与一个由供应商和分包商组成的大团队合作来完成施工。参与者数量的增加（以及相关的复杂程度的变化）导致了沟通和协调方面的重大失误。碎片化的程度也使得现有技术难以实现IT支持。因此，许多协调任务和数据共享仍然是通过纸质文档手动执行的。美国住房和城市发展部进行的研究充分记录了这种手工过程在时间、错误和返工方面的成本。为了响应这些结构和信息问题，本提案确定了流程连接器的开发，以增加信息的可用性和对非常复杂的供应和安装链的所有参与者的适用性。流程连接器将位于一个公司的流程和数据与位于另一个公司的流程和数据连接起来。它提供了一种明确表达公司内部流程信息的方式。这允许行业参与者了解其他参与者需要从他们那里获得哪些信息，以及其他参与者如何使用这些信息。该项目的目标是产生必要的理论和理解，以便在住宅建筑行业中快速和一致地生成过程连接器。特定的交付物是工业基础类的扩展和元扩展，以支持过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中与住宅建筑行业合作。与工业界的合作提供了直接的机会，以促进资助的教育目标，让学生参与研究，并为课堂教学开发例子和系统。该研究预计将具有广泛的意义，因为许多相互作用过程的管理是房屋建设中最具挑战性和最昂贵的方面之一。即使这项工作只取得了部分成功，它对每年3200亿美元的住宅建筑业的潜在贡献也是巨大的。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，提议的项目承诺发展重要的理论和理解，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.