An automated model for materials management and control

Current, manual, materials management and control procedures are unsatisfactory: they are labour intensive, inaccurate and error prone. The result is waste and surplus of materials, delays, decrease in productivity and lack of up-to-date, real-time information regarding the status of purchase orders (PO), the levels of inventory, the actual vs. planned usage of materials, and others. The purpose of the present work was to develop an automated model, which alleviates some of these problems. Prior to developing the model, a field survey was conducted to learn, at first hand, what the typical problems with materials management and control are. The model initiates materials purchasing, follows up the status of PO, records materials data as they arrive to the site and their movement around the site, makes recommendations, generates reports and issues warnings. The model was implemented, tested and evaluated in an ongoing building construction project. The onsite experiments confirmed that automated materials management and control are feasible, resulting in real benefits, such as time savings, and availability of up-to-date and accurate information regarding stocks of materials on site.