Improving design and scheduling process for prefabrication of light gauge steel (LGS) panelized walls

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The modular (off-site or prefabricated) construction industry is becoming more widely recognized for its environmentally-friendly construction process, speed of construction, and waste reduction at cost-competitive prices. In this respect, modular construction provides a high level of construction flexibility, such that wall, floor, and roof panels or components (units or containers), based on project requirements. To capitalize on these benefits, modular construction companies need to develop well-organized scheduling for both offsite manufacturing and on-site operations. Such measures allow modular builders to continuously improve their production processes without sacrificing safety. To increase productivity by eliminating process waste, production processes, facility layout, workforce management, and material handling can be redesigned using various tools such as lean, simulation, and visualization. In addition, a well-built design system (i.e., workplace and drafting) can reduce not only the risk of injury, thereby boosting the efficiency of the construction process through improved safety, but also waste (e.g., material waste and non-value-added activities) leading to improve the productivity of the factory line. However, due to the lack of modular-based management systems, many manufacturing construction companies have the following challenges: (1) a wide variation in task durations; (2) overproduction and unbalance on the production line; and (3) a variation of worker performance at each station. To overcome these challenges, the research team expects the following benefits: (1) productivity improvement by developing a daily-based production scheduling system, which integrates the concepts of the continuous and pull flow with simulation and optimization in order to manage the production process and resources; (2) waste reduction by developing a modular-oriented intelligent design system; and (3) improved worker performance by designing an industrial hygiene model, mainly focused on designing task procedures and workplace, based on noise and ergonomic analyses.