Automation of the homebuilding supply chain network
Kunal Kot, Fall 2003
Brief:
The rapid and accurate flow of information is instrumental to any successful global marketplace, and the homebuilding industry is no exception. Accurate, on-hand information eliminates counter-productive time and labor, which has a direct impact on cost savings. But due to the involvement of a very high number of participants and the complex nature of the homebuilding supply chain, information management becomes not only one of the most crucial, but also one of the most difficult processes to handle. The good news is that in recent years, web awareness has opened the doors to endless opportunities for eliminating the redundant trade practices in the homebuilding supply chain and leading the industry towards automation. The bad news is, despite a boom in the construction software industry and e-business, the majority of the applications being developed operates on different back-end systems, including compatibility with different operating environments. This prevents a free flow of information amongst different systems. This research focuses on the problems faced by the trading partners in the homebuilding industry in exchanging information using common electronic standards. As a result of the research, a standard construct for a purchase order was developed using eXtensible Markup Language (XML). XML technology was chosen because of its flexibility and independence from the existing operating environments and back-end systems. The XML-based purchase order represents a standard format for exchanging the purchasing information amongst the trade partners in the homebuilding industry. The author has used the XML Schema Definition (XSD) for creating the schema of the purchase order. XML documents can then be used to represent the individual purchase orders, based on the XML schema.