The transition of industrialised house-building towards improved production control

Abstract: Production control is the coordination of supply chain and production activities within manufacturing systems to achieve specific delivery flexibility and delivery reliability with a minimum of cost. Swedish industrialised house-building is a part of housing construction, employing an engineer-to-order production strategy, meaning that products (buildings) are engineered (designed) and produced to order. The building system is used as a strategic asset, giving flexibility to the client and aiming for production standardisation (e.g. operations, material) and predictability (e.g. quality and delivery times) of the production. Still, the operational platform encounters problems resulting in severe rework, which impact on quality and time frames. This thesis describes the transition for industrialised house-building towards improved production control by assessing tools from other manufacturing typologies than industrialised housing and engineer-to-order. The aim of the assessment was to identify barriers against the transition. When assessing tools from other fields it is important that the analysis relates to the business model employed i.e. avoid the risk that measures introduced to the operational platform compromise the flexibility of the end product (the building). The tools were decided from a decision base methodology, which is a combination of a model for competitive capabilities and the three areas product, process and supply chain. The investigated tools were modularity, Systematic production Analysis (SPA) and Failure mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA). Empirical data were gathered from the production process of an industrialised house-builder and one of their first-tier suppliers. The results show that the tools have to be changed to fit in the industrialised house-building company. SPA was for example deconstructed with the idea to iteratively add back removed parts. In the FMEA study, the tool was also revised by suggesting new ranking systems to prioritise failure modes in production and the idea to reflect the industrial context of the house-builder and engineer-to-order. Especially indicative was the interaction between the severity and detection classes and the length of the supply chain. The most prominent barriers for production control identified in the assessment were product design in terms of interfaces and their tolerances, lack of testing in the production (exacerbated by the process length), choice of wood as the structural material, orders dispatched to the factory project-by-project, and lack of vertical integration among consultants and suppliers. Also, in the investigation of the transition towards improved production control, the assessment of the tools showed that it should be managed in a stepwise manner. Consequently, the impact from the tools on both the operational platform but also the business model can be monitored.