OPTIMIZING ROAD CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS THROUGH SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT

Abstract

Highway construction is a prime contributor to the nation's growth, and its development needs more attention than any other construction sector. The dynamic nature of these projects makes planning and scheduling complex. Considerable research has been carried out in various countries in supply chain management, and its application in construction. However, minimal studies have dealt with real-time data for material and equipment utilisation as input for discrete event simulation modelling as a tool for supply chain management in the Indian context. The present research arrives at a probability distribution function for material and equipment utilisation for all the layers of a highway construction project. Through extensive literature review and discussions with construction professionals, the critical resources whose unavailability contributes to the delay of highway projects were identified. Sixty-two national and state highway construction projects across Kerala were identified for the current study, and data on the prime resources for planning and scheduling were collected. The activities considered in this study are the construction of (i) Sub-base course (ii) Base course, (iii) Binder course - I, (iv) Binder course - II and (v) Surface course. The variability of the raw data collected was filtered by checking the presence of outliers with the statistical software SPSS. After eliminating outlier values, the best fit probability distribution function is arrived at, for the material and the equipment data of all the activities using @risk palisade software. Keywords: Highway construction, simulation model, supply chain management, Taguchi analysis