Quantified benefit of GPS in earthmoving operations

Abstract

Over the past decades, the construction industry around the world has tried to find out methods for gaining higher productivity. As one of solutions, the Global Positioning System (GPS) has been advancing at an accelerated pace and applied intensively to the U.S. construction industry as a practical tool for high performance on the job site. However, the objective evaluation of its performance has not been introduced in Korea yet. The objective of this study is to evaluate the productivity of two models; the traditional earthmoving operation and the advanced one equipped with GPS, based on simulation methodology. Accordingly, the productivity variation resulting from the simulation of different work procedures in two methods can identify the benefits of advanced systems using GPS. Research findings indicates that the advanced earthmoving operations equipped with GPS system has 41.09% of higher daily productivity with 24.45% of decreased cost per unit compared with those of the traditional system. And it is also found from the sensitivity analysis of productivity that the number of dozers is the major factor to affecting the productivity.