| 1. |
- Lessing, Jerker, et al.
(författare)
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Industrialised housing : definition and categorization of the concept
- 2005
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Ingår i: Proceedings. - Sydney : International group for lean construction. - 1877040347 ; , s. 471-480
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- A new and developed concept of industrialised housing is emerging in the Swedish building industry today. The general opinion is that industrialised housing contains the answer to many of the problems in the building sector. The paper presents a comprehensive definition of industrialised housing, points at its corner stones and key characteristics and discusses how it relates to the paradigms of lean and agile production. Eight characteristic areas are identified: Planning and control of the processes, Developed technical systems, Off-site manufacturing of building parts, Long-term relations between participants, Supply chain management integrated in the construction process, Customer focus, Use of information and communication technology, Systematic performance measuring and re-use of experiences. A categorization model is developed that allows an assessment of the degrees of implementation and fulfillment for each area. The categorization aims at pointing out the areas of strengths and weaknesses of companies working with industrialised housing. The categorization model is tested on two leading Swedish industrialised housing companies working with different frame systems and different organisational set up.
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| 2. |
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| 3. |
- Engström, Susanne, et al.
(författare)
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Competitive impact of industrialised building : in search for explanations to the current state
- 2009
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Ingår i: Twenty-Fifth Annual Conference, 2009, September 7-9, Albert Hall, Nottingham. - Reading : Association of Researchers in Construction Management. - 9780955239021 - 9780955239014 ; , s. 413-424
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Industrialised building has been proposed as a means of satisfying changes needed in the Swedish building sector. Over the last decade industrialised building has also developed as a niche within this sector. Given its potential, however, some stakeholders think that industrialised building has not yet had the impact they expected, and that the building sector is still in need of change to meet demands for cost reduction, quality improvement and longer managerial time-spans. Consequently, questions arise regarding the competitive position of industrialised building today, and the underlying causes for its present state. This study is based on a literature review, assessing industrialised building over recent decades, and on complementary interviews with researchers and practitioners. The findings are summarised in a conceptual model that outlines the sought effects of industrialised building, as well as the forces that drive and restrain change towards industrialised building. The demands on the building sector are the main drivers of change for the industry. However, the market itself is not actively driving change towards industrialised building, and the information and understanding required to support clients' decision on whether to enforce market power in one or the other direction is not readily available. How building clients value different building possibilities is also unclear. Suggested future challenges are to reduce client uncertainty, to improve client power and to facilitate the comparison of performance between traditional and industrialised building alternatives.
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| 4. |
- Engström, Susanne, et al.
(författare)
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Towards improving client-contractor communication in industrialised building
- 2009
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Ingår i: Twenty-Fifth Annual Conference, 2009, September 7-9, Albert Hall, Nottingham. - Reading : Association of Researchers in Construction Management. - 9780955239021 - 095523901X - 9780955239014 ; , s. 21-30
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Criticism of the building sector in Sweden, concerning for example high cost and poor quality, has lead to a growing interest in industrialised building. However, the effect on the sector and the overall building market is still quite insignificant. One business challenge for industrialised building companies to face in order to become more competitive is to further improve client/market interaction, improve mutual understanding and to reduce uncertainties in client relations. In this ongoing work the communication between industrialised building companies and building clients is examined. The aim is to identify important points of client-contractor communication that affect project outcome and present barriers to effective communication. In addition to a literature review, with the aim to define effective communication , the client-contractor communication in different building projects has been studied. Empirical data was collected through interviews and workshops, observations and project-specific documentation, addressing both clients and contractors. The results indicate that, in order to improve client-contractor communication, it seems important to assess if a barrier to effective communication is client uncertainty, and concerned with lack of information, or if it is client equivocality, which requires richer information rather than more information. The barrier must then be addressed accordingly. In the industrialised building context, client-contractor communication is probably distorted by lack of market/client knowledge concerning the industrialised building process, but also by previous experiences from traditional building.
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| 5. |
- Erikshammar, Jarkko, et al.
(författare)
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Discrete Event Simulation Enhanced Value Stream Mapping: An Industrialized Construction Case Study
- 2013
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Ingår i: Lean Construction Journal. - 1555-1369. ; 10, s. 47-65
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Research Question/Hypothesis: Can a production process design framework created by integrating Value Stream Mapping (VSM) and Discrete Event Simulation (DES) be used to assess the production system performance, as predicted by a future state design of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) working in industrialized construction?Purpose: To explore a production process design framework in which VSM is used to identify doable improvements and DES provides analytical evaluation of them.Research Method: The demonstration was carried out at a Swedish SME industrialized construction component manufacturerFindings: VSM is unable to evaluate analytically the performance of the future state design. This inability leads to unnecessary implementation iterations. VSM assumes a deterministic model and cannot describe the dynamic behaviors of a system. The dynamic behavior of the construction processes will result in the future state design not performing as expected. However, by analytically evaluating the future state with DES helped the case company to implement a new production process design.Limitations: DES modeling is still time-consuming and needs skilled professionals, the cost of whom can be prohibitive for SMEs and demonstrated in one case study.Implications: The integration of DES and VSM provides a framework to evaluate and communicate the outcome, hence enhancing the application of VSM.Value for practitioners: A lean framework, which can be used, for industrialized construction processes especially by SMEs with very limited resources, to validate changes before implementing them.
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| 6. |
- Gharbia, Marwan, et al.
(författare)
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Building Code Compliance for Off-Site Construction
- 2023
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Ingår i: Journal of Legal Affairs and Dispute Resolution in Engineering and Construction. - : American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). - 1943-4162 .- 1943-4170. ; 15:2
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- There are increasing concerns over building code, regulation compliance, and quality assurance issues in adopting off-site construction techniques in the construction industry related to meeting client expectations and regulatory requirements. Performance-based building regulations often allow for space for innovation but not a safe space for those who intend to introduce new construction techniques not prescribed in building regulations. Through a series of surveys conducted in Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, China, Singapore, and Australia, this study identified approaches and practices used in these countries that overcome compliance challenges when off-site construction techniques are used. The findings showed that manufacturer self-certification is the predominant approach for meeting code compliance requirements. A fit-for-purpose regulatory compliance system also warrants fair allocation of risks and liabilities to anyone involved in the supply chain. However, a healthy and functional regulatory system for off-site compliance requires third-party certification for products and factories and traceability. It is hoped that the lessons learned from this study can help policymakers introduce changes in product standards and legislation in order to improve the compliance and performance of off-site construction. This study concluded that a chain of custody approach is necessary in order to address quality concerns surrounding the adoption of prefabrication technology in countries that are increasingly exploring greater use of manufacturing in construction.
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| 7. |
- Haller, Martin, et al.
(författare)
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An indicator for superfluous iteration in offsite building design processes
- 2015
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Ingår i: Architectural Engineering and Design Management. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1745-2007 .- 1752-7589. ; 11:5, s. 360-375
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Enhancement of iteration management in the design phase is important for successful offsite building projects. Design iteration has two aspects. Although iteration is necessary to deal with design requirements when solving complex problems (i.e. increasing quality through iteration), it has also been identified in numerous studies to be one of the main causes of design errors and time and cost overruns (i.e. superfluous iteration), as it increases scheduling and design complexity. Current building project management tools do not provide a means to control the reduction of superfluous iteration. One problem is that existing research has difficulty precisely relating the effects of specific management actions to superfluous iteration. The idea of this study is to develop an indicator, the sequence deviation quotient (SDQ), which reflects the amount of superfluous design iteration in a project. It can be thought of as a tool supporting project managers to make systematic and continuous (from project to project) design process improvement. A premise is that the impact of varying project conditions on the process structure of design processes, i.e. the precedence relationships between the design activities, is only small. In this paper, we provide a definition of superfluous iteration. We tested the feasibility of the SDQ by subjecting it to project variation and input perturbation by means of a Monte Carlo simulation. The simulations are based on the data from a real offsite design building process, the designing of a 1100 m2 residential building in Sweden.
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| 8. |
- Jonsson, Henric, 1983-
(författare)
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Production Strategy in Project Based Production within a House-Building Context
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- A production strategy enables companies to effectively manage the different challenges that the production function face in a competitive environment. A production strategy helps a company to make operational and strategic decisions that follow a logical pattern and supports the corporate strategy and the competitive priorities of the company. When no strategy exists the decisions may be arbitrary and unpredictable leading to an under-achieving production system. Production strategy involves decisions that shape the long term capabilities of a producing company. For the traditional production industry there are a number of production strategy frameworks that facilitates the process of designing production systems. However, these frameworks typically leave project based production out of the scope or treat project based production as one type of production system, when in fact project based production systems can be multifaceted depending on product design and market requirements.This thesis focus on project based manufacturing in a house-building context. Houses can be produced by different types of production systems, and depending on how the production systems are designed they have strengths and weaknesses in different areas of competition. To be able to meet the increasing demand for residential houses, and improve performance in the house-building industry, the way houses are produced have to match different market requirements in a more effective and efficient way. To do this a production strategy has to exist. Typically there is a trade-off between productivity and flexibility, hence a production system designed to meet customer requirements concerning product design is probably not the best process choice if the customer thinks price and delivery time are the most important. A production strategy helps a company to make decisions so that the output of the production system meets customer requirements in the best possible way. Due to the fact that project based production is typically left out of the scope in traditional production strategy literature and that there is a lack of research concerning production strategy in a house-building context, the purpose of this research is:… to extend the production strategy body of knowledge concerning project based production in a house-building context.To fulfil the purpose the following four research questions are studied and answered:RQ1: What aspects can be useful in a classification matrix contrasting different production systems for house-building?RQ2: Which competitive priorities are important to measure when evaluating different production systems on a production strategy level in a house-building context, and how can they quantitatively be measured?RQ3: How does the characteristics of the production system, i.e. the process choice, affect information exchange in a house-building context?RQ4: How can a new production strategy be formulated and implemented in an industrialised house-building context and what challenges are important to consider in that process?To answer RQ1 a classification matrix was developed that classify production systems along two dimensions: a product dimension (degree of product standardisation) and a process dimension (degree of off-site assembly). The two dimensions are related, for example a high degree of standardisation should be matched with a high degree of off-site assembly and consequently a low degree of product standardisation should be matched with a low degree of off-suite assembly. A mismatch, e.g. high degree of off-site assembly and low degree of standardisation, typically leads to poor performance and should hence be avoided.To be able to see how different types of production systems perform in different areas of competition key performance indicators (KPIs) were developed. The KPIs presented in this research can be used to measure quality, delivery (speed and dependability), cost (level and dependability), and flexibility (volume and mix) at a production strategic level (RQ2).Furthermore, to answer RQ3, a production strategy perspective was taken on information exchange by relating information exchange to the design of the production system. The results indicate that employing different types of production systems leads to different approaches to information exchange. Employing a production systems using traditional production methods on-site and a low degree of product standardisation lead to a traditional approach to information exchange, e.g. project meetings, telephone and mail. Production systems employing some degree of off-site assembly have less complex and more stable supply chains and use ICT-solutions to a higher extent, which facilitates information exchange. The findings also indicate that a high degree of product standardisation facilitates the use of ICT-solutions such as ERP and BIM.RQ4 concerns the production strategy process, i.e. formulation and implementation. Failure in this processes can jeopardise the whole business. Based on a longitudinal case study of an industrialised house-builder a suggested production strategy process was developed, including both production strategy formulation and implementation. The study also identified context specific challenges that have to be considered in an industrialised house-building context, e.g. the complexity that comes with using two different production processes (off-site and on-site) in the same production system.The research is case based and a total number of eight different production systems have been studied. Data has been collected through interviews, observations, and review of company documents.
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