Abstract
To satisfy customers’ desires with a maintained efficiency of the production process is a challenge for many house construction companies. Houses are one-off projects with a production process characterized by variability and complexity that often lead to unpredicted costs. Prefabricated component solutions could possibly solve these issues through modularization, mass customization and delayed product differentiation. The purpose of this paper is to explore the opportunities and barriers to use prefabricated house components. Interviews were conducted with two industrial house manufacturers to pinpoint these opportunities and barriers. The impact of this research may have value for house construction companies considering the use of prefabricated house components. The use of these components may lead to benefits such as shorter lead-time, higher quality, decreased complexity in coordination and reduced risks of production failures. Moreover, this research may be valuable to house component suppliers in the business development of their product offers to industrial house builders.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Proceedings of the 19th Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction |
| Editors | John Rooke, Dave Bhargav |
| Place of Publication | Lima, Peru |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| Publication status | Published - 2011 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Subject classification (UKÄ)
- Construction Management
Free keywords
- prefabrication
- mass customization
- house components
- process improvement