Mostafa, S; Chileshe, N and Zuo, J (2014) A synergistic supply chain enhancing offsite manufacturing uptake in Australian house building. In: Raiden, A and Aboagye-Nimo, E (eds.) Proceedings of 30th Annual ARCOM Conference, 1-3 September 2014, Portsmouth, UK.
Abstract
Offsite manufacturing could become a key innovation for the future of Australian house building due to its capacity in meeting the growing housing demand, green construction and fewer requirements for labour force. It is a modern construction method where house building involves offsite factories and onsite construction. Three major challenges for managing the two working sites are broken junction, jumbled on-site process and vague demands from unclear customers. The two sites have several forms of non-value added activities. On the other hand, the house customisation adds more complexities to the design specification that leads to slow response to achieve house customer demand in short time. This is a proposition paper which aims to explore the opportunity of offsite manufacturing in Australia. This research conducts the offsite manufacturing exploration by reviewing the related literature. The research discovers that incorporating lean and agile concepts could overcome the existing barriers of offsite manufacturing uptake in Australia. Therefore, four house building strategies: built to stock, assemble to order, design to order, and self-building house are introduced for different house building alternatives in Australia.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | Australian housing; offsite manufacturing; synergistic supply chain |
| Index terms: | strategy, construction method, Australia, customization, site process, onsite, labour force, housing, complexity, exploration, design specification |
| Subjects: | construction type, construction manufacturing, operations management, environmental resource management, Geography, design practice, management, economics, systems engineering, building construction |
| Topics: | Sustainability, Construction Technology, Business Strategy, Engineering Principles, Geographical Context, Site Management, Design Practice, Supply Chain Management |
| Descriptive scope: | 2 PC |
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