Song, M H (2019) Formalization of smallest workface boundary (SWFB): Toward generating and operating level of development (LOD) 400-based daily bill of materials (BOM). PhD thesis, Stanford University, USA.
Abstract
Level of development (LOD) 400 provides the definitive and fully developed 3D objects at fabrication level of detail and is, therefore, the level appropriate for a foreman to use for managing the construction work at the workface. However, for a foreman, planning a day, updating the work completed, and tracking the daily performance—thereby going through the plan-do-check-act (PDCA) cycle on a daily basis—with LOD400 objects can be time-consuming and onerous, since LOD400 is highly granular and a foreman's priority is not operating digital information in an office environment. This research considers these conditions of a foreman in a field setting and introduces an ontology that allows a foreman to go through the PDCA cycle on a daily basis with LOD400 objects. The key enabling concept is the smallest workface boundary (SWFB), which is a boundary that encapsulates a set of LOD400 objects in the smallest workable unit for a certain trade. With SWFBs, the granularity of the LOD400 objects that a foreman has to interact with can be reduced and a foreman can quickly select the LOD400 objects to be built on a day, generate a LOD400-based daily bill of materials (BOM), and operate the BOM through the PDCA cycle. The concept of a SWFB was incorporated into a software prototype for field experiments. The field experiments with the prototype showed that a foreman can go through the PDCA cycle with LOD400 objects in 2 minutes and 47 seconds per day on average and the qualitative measure of the usability was also high with a usability score (on the System Usability Scale) of 95 on average, which can be interpreted as above excellent. Future research should focus on applying the prototype on a larger scale with interdependent parties, including suppliers, involved and measuring the impact of the prototype on the performance, such as the accuracy of materials ordered and the reason for non-completion due to inaccurate ordering.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Thesis advisor: | Fischer, M; Khanzode, A and Lepech, M |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | accuracy; fabrication |
| Index terms: | level of detail, accuracy, experiment, ontology, usability, prototype, level of development, construction work, fabrication |
| Subjects: | manufacturing engineering, operations management, design practice, education and knowledge transfer, professional development, data collection methods, user-centered design, technical documentation, modelling and simulation |
| Topics: | Project Management, Engineering Principles, Design Practice, Research Practice, Information Management |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCTE |
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