Grants and Contributions:

Grant or Award spanning more than one fiscal year. (2017-2018 to 2018-2019)

The primary advantages of industrialization of the construction process (modular and offsite method) are anx000D
environmentally-friendly construction process, short completion time, and cost-competitive technology. Fortisx000D
light gauge steel (LGS) Structures Inc. focuses on producing walls and bath units in their factory and then shipsx000D
them to sites for installation. Since their core value is to reduce onsite construction time while improving thex000D
quality of the delivered product, the management team has focused on reducing the cycle time of thex000D
prefabrication process in the factory for better productivity. However, its full potential in terms of productivityx000D
improvement has not yet been realized since labour-intensive tasks in the manufacturing process entail manyx000D
non-value added activities which its completion is heavily reliant on worker intuition and experience due to thex000D
lack of architectural and structural information (i.e., cutting patterns for boarding design) in the shop drawings.x000D
In this respect, the guesswork and rules of thumb are replaced with scientific and engineering sequences ofx000D
tasks for productivity improvement. We thus propose an integrated solution which has the followingx000D
procedures: (1) identification of issues such as lack of design information or heavy physical demands whichx000D
may cause productivity and safety reduction; (2) development of a framework for estimating cycle time andx000D
efficiency evaluation to establish correlation factors which affects safety and productivity between constructionx000D
methods (operational variables), sequences of tasks (physical demand variables), and design variables such asx000D
dimensions of walls and of opening space; and (3) development of a smart design system which determinesx000D
sheathing and drywall sheet layout on wall panels by optimize engineering (e.g. boarding sheet layout) andx000D
physical demand (e.g. minimum posture risk) factors. The proposed system will minimize wastesx000D
(non-value-adding activities) of tasks and material utilization. The smart design system is expected to bex000D
implemented in order to improve productivity and safety of the Fortis manufacturing process.