Improving Supply Chain Communications for Off-Site Construction Using Process Specification Language

Off-site construction has undergone a rapid development driven by their favorable characteristics, such as fast construction, waste reduction and clean on-site environment. Nevertheless, frequent engineering changes often create unpredictable challenges for precast production planning, resulting in production delay or additional storage costs. In order to achieve the target of just-in-time production and lean construction, it is vital to harmonize the supply chain communication amongst different phases of component production, transportation and on-site assembly. The automatic exchanges and conveyance of the process information amongst different phases are nearly impossible due to the mismatching definitions of semantics and syntax used in different planning software that are adopted in different construction phases, e.g. assembly design, component production, and on-site assembly. To address this problem, the Process Specification Language (PSL) is explored in this paper to unify the process information from multiple planning software applications. A translation framework of process information communications in the off-site construction supply chain has been developed based on the functional analysis. Semantic mapping and extensions of PSL are proposed, given the specific requirements of off-site construction scheduling management. Finally, the superiority of this method is demonstrated using two case studies to confirm the scheduling and sequencing information interaction amongst the phases of assembly design, component production, and on-site construction can be enhanced by the present method.