Arashpour, M; Wakefield, R; Blismas, N and Abbasi, B (2016) Quantitative analysis of rate-driven and due date-driven construction: Production efficiency, supervision, and controllability in residential projects. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 142(1): 05015012, ISSN 0733-9364
Abstract
Concerns about production efficiency, quality, and affordability in the residential construction indicate there may be benefits in adopting alternative production control strategies to those traditionally used. Reducing adverse effects of exogenous variability in demand and endogenous variability in process are the ultimate goals of production control strategies. For residential construction this means controlling the number of houses under construction and controlling the start rate of new house constructions. The aim of this investigation is to compare and contrast the outcomes of these two production management strategies. Production data of two volume house builders in Victoria and Queensland, Australia, were collected. Tangible performance metrics from the builders were analyzed and compared using the principles of queuing theory. Then numerous simulation experiments were designed and run to analyze different what-if scenarios in the building environment. A special purpose simulation template was developed to define a cap for production and limit the number of houses under construction based on actual demand and available capacity. The findings reveal that rate-driven construction outperforms due date-driven construction in terms of three studied performance measures. This investigation adopts an original and quantitative approach towards three production aspects of efficiency, supervision and controllability. Therefore it contributes to the body of knowledge by developing an in-depth insight into superior performance of the rate-driven control strategy with the intention of improving production output and long term sustainability of residential and other subsectors of the construction industry.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | computer simulation; critical path method; due date-driven construction; efficiency; first-in-first-out; project management; quantitative methods; queuing theory; rate-driven construction; residential projects; resource utilization; sensitivity analysis |
| Index terms: | affordability, critical path method, house construction, quantitative analysis, body of knowledge, quantitative method, residential project, Queensland, builder, computer simulation, strategy, performance measure, production management, sensitivity analysis, performance metric, supervision, project management, variability, construction industry, residential construction, investigation, Australia, production control, simulation experiment, Victoria, resource utilization, efficiency |
| Subjects: | project management theory and practice, Geography, performance management, construction integration, performance measurement, management, economic development, statistical analysis, environmental hazards, industry analysis, practitioner, control systems, construction type, data collection methods, site logistics, regions and continents, economic analysis, project delivery, data analysis and analytics, knowledge management, operations research, modelling and simulation |
| Topics: | Quality Management, Urban Studies, Digital Applications, Time Control, Site Management, Information Management, Research Practice, Project Management, Geographical Context, Business Strategy, Sustainability, Construction Technology, Roles and Professions |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCTA |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here