Operations management concepts applied to offsite construction

Abstract

The Architecture Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry has been criticized for low productivity, lack of innovations, damage to the environment, lack of improvement. Several innovations have emerged to address these problems and, in this paper, the relationship between operations management (OM) and offsite construction will be discussed. The purpose of this paper is to present a proposal for the application of OM concepts in offsite construction. A research method based on the assumption that construction processes can be analyzed as production systems will be used. The resulting proposal consists of the exploration of potential applications, benefits, and barriers of OM in offsite construction based on the current experience of OM in manufacturing processes. A thorough discussion about the implications of this proposal in a project and supply chain levels are presented. The most important conclusions were related to the need for applying OM concepts in offsite construction projects and the need for more research in this direction to prove the proposed proposal.