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Open Access
Article
Publication date: 7 September 2023

Chioma Okoro

Technological change drives transformation in most sectors of the economy. Industry 4.0 technologies have been applied at different stages of a building’s lifecycle. However…

Abstract

Purpose

Technological change drives transformation in most sectors of the economy. Industry 4.0 technologies have been applied at different stages of a building’s lifecycle. However, limited studies exist on their application in real estate facilities management (REFM). This study aims to assess the existing knowledge on the topic to suggest further research directions.

Design/methodology/approach

Scopus-indexed literature from 2013 to 2023 was examined and visualised using VOSviewer software to output quantitative (descriptive) results. Content analysis was used to complement the quantitative findings.

Findings

Findings indicated a concentration of research in China, Norway and Italy. The knowledge areas included three clusters: lifecycle integration and management, data curation and management and organisational and management capabilities. The benefits, challenges and support strategies were highlighted.

Research limitations/implications

More collaboration is needed across countries and territories on technology integration in REFM. Future research using alternative methodologies is recommended, with a focus on adopting and non-adopting REFM organisations. Further, implications for facility managers, employees, technology suppliers or vendors, training, organisations and management exist.

Practical implications

Further, implications for facility managers, employees, technology suppliers or vendors, training, organisations and management exist.

Originality/value

The study reveals the knowledge base on technology use in REFM. It adds to the evidence base on innovation and technology adoption in REFM.

Details

Facilities , vol. 41 no. 15/16
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0263-2772

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 11 May 2023

Marco D’Orazio, Gabriele Bernardini and Elisa Di Giuseppe

This paper aims to develop predictive methods, based on recurrent neural networks, useful to support facility managers in building maintenance tasks, by collecting information…

2690

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to develop predictive methods, based on recurrent neural networks, useful to support facility managers in building maintenance tasks, by collecting information coming from a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS).

Design/methodology/approach

This study applies data-driven and text-mining approaches to a CMMS data set comprising more than 14,500 end-users’ requests for corrective maintenance actions, collected over 14 months. Unidirectional long short-term memory (LSTM) and bidirectional LSTM (Bi-LSTM) recurrent neural networks are trained to predict the priority of each maintenance request and the related technical staff assignment. The data set is also used to depict an overview of corrective maintenance needs and related performances and to verify the most relevant elements in the building and how the current facility management (FM) relates to the requests.

Findings

The study shows that LSTM and Bi-LSTM recurrent neural networks can properly recognize the words contained in the requests, thus correctly and automatically assigning the priority and predicting the technical staff to assign for each end-user’s maintenance request. The obtained global accuracy is very high, reaching 93.3% for priority identification and 96.7% for technical staff assignment. Results also show the main critical building elements for maintenance requests and the related intervention timings.

Research limitations/implications

This work shows that LSTM and Bi-LSTM recurrent neural networks can automate the assignment process of end-users’ maintenance requests if trained with historical CMMS data. Results are promising; however, the trained LSTM and Bi-LSTM RNN can be applied only to different hospitals adopting similar categorization.

Practical implications

The data-driven and text-mining approaches can be integrated into the CMMS to support corrective maintenance management by facilities management contractors, i.e. to properly and timely identify the actions to be carried out and the technical staff to assign.

Social implications

The improvement of the maintenance of the health-care system is a key component of improving health service delivery. This work shows how to reduce health-care service interruptions due to maintenance needs through machine learning methods.

Originality/value

This study develops original methods and tools easily integrable into IT workflow systems (i.e. CMMS) in the FM field.

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 1 August 2022

Conor Shaw, Flávia de Andrade Pereira, Ciaran McNally, Karim Farghaly, Timo Hartmann and James O'Donnell

Effective information management can help real estate operators improve asset performance during use, reducing environmental impact. The purpose of this exploratory study is to…

1421

Abstract

Purpose

Effective information management can help real estate operators improve asset performance during use, reducing environmental impact. The purpose of this exploratory study is to identify and prioritise key drivers, challenges and opportunities relating to information management, from the point of view of a diverse cohort of facilities practitioners, with the aim of guiding future research direction and contributing to a comprehensive domain understanding.

Design/methodology/approach

Nine interviews are conducted across a broad sample of real estate sectors, the respondents including six facility managers and three data managers. A thematic analysis results in the identification and ranking in terms of importance of 44 emergent themes. These themes are then grouped into abstracted categories for analysis and synthesis.

Findings

This study indicates that systemic rather than technical issues are the greatest barrier to effective information management for facilities practitioners, the interviews providing examples of practical measures which address these challenges, promoting lifecycle thinking. Alignment is also found between the facilities and data management cohorts regarding lifecycle thinking towards both physical assets and information.

Practical implications

This study provides direction for future developments in the facilities sector, suggesting the pursuit to address systemic issues as being both worthwhile and feasible.

Originality/value

The novelty of this study is the ranking and synthesis of practitioner priorities with regard to high-level information management issues which is lacking in the literature, with a focus to-date on case-specific technical integration.

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 10 December 2019

Yi-Shun Wang, Timmy H. Tseng, Yu-Min Wang and Chun-Wei Chu

Understanding people’s intentions to be an internet entrepreneur is an important issue for educators, academics and practitioners. The purpose of this paper is to develop and…

7794

Abstract

Purpose

Understanding people’s intentions to be an internet entrepreneur is an important issue for educators, academics and practitioners. The purpose of this paper is to develop and validate a scale to measure internet entrepreneurial self-efficacy.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on an analysis of 356 responses, a scale of internet entrepreneurial self-efficacy is validated in accordance with established scale development procedures.

Findings

The internet entrepreneurial self-efficacy scale has 16 items under three factors (i.e. leadership, technology utilization and internet marketing and e-commerce). The scale demonstrated adequate convergent validity, discriminant validity and criterion-related validity. Nomological validity was established by the positive correlation between the scale and, respectively, internet entrepreneurship knowledge and entrepreneurial intention.

Originality/value

This study is a pioneering effort to develop and validate a scale to measure internet entrepreneurial self-efficacy. The results of this study are helpful to researchers in building internet entrepreneurship theories and to educators in assessing and promoting individuals’ internet entrepreneurial self-efficacy and behavior.

Open Access
Book part
Publication date: 1 May 2019

Arturas Kaklauskas, Irene Lill, Dilanthi Amaratunga and Ieva Ubarte

This article’s purpose is to develop The Model for Smart, Self-learning and Adaptive Resilience Building (SARB).

Abstract

Purpose

This article’s purpose is to develop The Model for Smart, Self-learning and Adaptive Resilience Building (SARB).

Design/Methodology/Approach

Products and patents of methods and systems analysis was carried out in the fields of BIM application, Smart, Self-learning and Adaptive Resilience Building. Based on other researchers’ findings, The SARB Model was proposed.

Findings

Analysis of the literature showed that traditional decisions on the informational modelling do not satisfy all the needs of smart building technologies owing to their static nature. The SARB Model was developed to take care of its efficiency from the brief stage to the end of its service life.

Research Limitations/Implications

The SARB Model was developed to take care of its efficiency from the brief stage to the end of its service life. The SARB Model does have some limitations: (1) the processes followed require the collection of much unstructured and semi-structured data from many sources, along with their analyses to support stakeholders in decision-making; (2) stakeholders need to be aware of the broader context of decision-making and (3) the proposal is process-oriented, which can be a disadvantage during the model’s implementation.

Practical Implications

Two directions can be identified for the practical implications of the SARB Model. The initial expectation is the widespread installation of SARB Model within real estate and construction organisations. Furthermore, development of the SARB Model will be used to implement the ERASMUS+ project, “Advancing Skill Creation to ENhance Transformation—ASCENT” Project No. 561712-EPP-1-2015-UK-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP.

Originality/Value

The practical implications of this paper are valuable.

Details

10th Nordic Conference on Construction Economics and Organization
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83867-051-1

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 28 February 2023

Luca Rampini and Fulvio Re Cecconi

This study aims to introduce a new methodology for generating synthetic images for facility management purposes. The method starts by leveraging the existing 3D open-source BIM…

1010

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to introduce a new methodology for generating synthetic images for facility management purposes. The method starts by leveraging the existing 3D open-source BIM models and using them inside a graphic engine to produce a photorealistic representation of indoor spaces enriched with facility-related objects. The virtual environment creates several images by changing lighting conditions, camera poses or material. Moreover, the created images are labeled and ready to be trained in the model.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper focuses on the challenges characterizing object detection models to enrich digital twins with facility management-related information. The automatic detection of small objects, such as sockets, power plugs, etc., requires big, labeled data sets that are costly and time-consuming to create. This study proposes a solution based on existing 3D BIM models to produce quick and automatically labeled synthetic images.

Findings

The paper presents a conceptual model for creating synthetic images to increase the performance in training object detection models for facility management. The results show that virtually generated images, rather than an alternative to real images, are a powerful tool for integrating existing data sets. In other words, while a base of real images is still needed, introducing synthetic images helps augment the model’s performance and robustness in covering different types of objects.

Originality/value

This study introduced the first pipeline for creating synthetic images for facility management. Moreover, this paper validates this pipeline by proposing a case study where the performance of object detection models trained on real data or a combination of real and synthetic images are compared.

Details

Construction Innovation , vol. 24 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1471-4175

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 30 January 2005

Guojun Ji

In the development processes of a product’s market life cycle, there are three phases of an enterprise’s innovation: new product development, production processes, and product…

Abstract

In the development processes of a product’s market life cycle, there are three phases of an enterprise’s innovation: new product development, production processes, and product management. In this article, the analyses of benefit and costs, value, and profit to companies are discussed in different stages. New logistics features that appear in an enterprise’s supply chain based on innovative modeling are discussed. Then a logistics model and its technical system based on the classified logistics center are established, which are appropriate for innovative modeling within an agile supply chain. Using the basic theory and techniques of ‘extenics’, the formal conception of innovative modeling-based manufacture in logistics is presented, and the matter-element models are established. Finally, a case study demonstrates the results.

Details

Journal of International Logistics and Trade, vol. 3 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1738-2122

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 30 April 2012

Afzal Mohammad Khaled and Yong Jin Kim

Logistical facility location decisions can make a crucial difference in the success or failure of a company. Geographical Information Systems (GIS) have recently become a very…

Abstract

Logistical facility location decisions can make a crucial difference in the success or failure of a company. Geographical Information Systems (GIS) have recently become a very popular decision support system to help deal with facility location problems. However, until recently, GIS methodologies have not been fully embraced as a way to deal with new facility location problems in business logistics. This research makes a framework for categorizing empirical facility location problems based on the intensity of the involvement of GIS methodologies in decision making. This framework was built by analyzing facility location models and GIS methodologies. The research results revealed the depth of the embracement of GIS methodologies in logistics for determining new facility location decisions. In the new facility location decisions, spatial data inputs are almost always coupled with the visualization of the problems and solutions. However, the usage of GIS capability solely (i.e. suitability analysis) for problem solving has not been embraced at the same level. In most cases, the suitability analysis is used together with special optimization models for choosing among the multiple alternatives.

Details

Journal of International Logistics and Trade, vol. 10 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1738-2122

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 26 December 2023

Mehmet Kursat Oksuz and Sule Itir Satoglu

Disaster management and humanitarian logistics (HT) play crucial roles in large-scale events such as earthquakes, floods, hurricanes and tsunamis. Well-organized disaster response…

Abstract

Purpose

Disaster management and humanitarian logistics (HT) play crucial roles in large-scale events such as earthquakes, floods, hurricanes and tsunamis. Well-organized disaster response is crucial for effectively managing medical centres, staff allocation and casualty distribution during emergencies. To address this issue, this study aims to introduce a multi-objective stochastic programming model to enhance disaster preparedness and response, focusing on the critical first 72 h after earthquakes. The purpose is to optimize the allocation of resources, temporary medical centres and medical staff to save lives effectively.

Design/methodology/approach

This study uses stochastic programming-based dynamic modelling and a discrete-time Markov Chain to address uncertainty. The model considers potential road and hospital damage and distance limits and introduces an a-reliability level for untreated casualties. It divides the initial 72 h into four periods to capture earthquake dynamics.

Findings

Using a real case study in Istanbul’s Kartal district, the model’s effectiveness is demonstrated for earthquake scenarios. Key insights include optimal medical centre locations, required capacities, necessary medical staff and casualty allocation strategies, all vital for efficient disaster response within the critical first 72 h.

Originality/value

This study innovates by integrating stochastic programming and dynamic modelling to tackle post-disaster medical response. The use of a Markov Chain for uncertain health conditions and focus on the immediate aftermath of earthquakes offer practical value. By optimizing resource allocation amid uncertainties, the study contributes significantly to disaster management and HT research.

Details

Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2042-6747

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 4 December 2023

Diego Espinosa Gispert, Ibrahim Yitmen, Habib Sadri and Afshin Taheri

The purpose of this research is to develop a framework of an ontology-based Asset Information Model (AIM) for a Digital Twin (DT) platform and enhance predictive maintenance…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this research is to develop a framework of an ontology-based Asset Information Model (AIM) for a Digital Twin (DT) platform and enhance predictive maintenance practices in building facilities that could enable proactive and data-driven decision-making during the Operation and Maintenance (O&M) process.

Design/methodology/approach

A scoping literature review was accomplished to establish the theoretical foundation for the current investigation. A study on developing an ontology-based AIM for predictive maintenance in building facilities was conducted. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with industry professionals to gather qualitative data for ontology-based AIM framework validation and insights.

Findings

The research findings indicate that while the development of ontology faced challenges in defining missing entities and relations in the context of predictive maintenance, insights gained from the interviews enabled the establishment of a comprehensive framework for ontology-based AIM adoption in the Facility Management (FM) sector.

Practical implications

The proposed ontology-based AIM has the potential to enable proactive and data-driven decision-making during the process, optimizing predictive maintenance practices and ultimately enhancing energy efficiency and sustainability in the building industry.

Originality/value

The research contributes to a practical guide for ontology development processes and presents a framework of an Ontology-based AIM for a Digital Twin platform.

Details

Smart and Sustainable Built Environment, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2046-6099

Keywords

1 – 10 of over 1000