6,293 research outputs found

    Opportunities and challenges to mass customise low-income housing in Brazil

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    Mass Customization (MC) stands for the ability to develop high value-added products within short time frames and at relatively low costs. Although this strategy has been successfully applied in several industries, in construction it has been mostly limited to a few companies that produce factory-built and manufactured homes. In Brazil, where traditional construction techniques are majorly adopted in low-income housing programs, there have been many critics regarding the excessive standardization and thus, non-consideration of the increasing diversity of households and their specific needs. Such standardization is mainly due to the use of mass production core ideas as a way to achieve low costs. The aim of this paper was then to explore the possibilities of adopting mass customization in this context. Two existing low-income housing programs in Brazil were investigated. The discussion on the opportunities and challenges to introduce mass customization ideas in these programs are based on the analysis of the product development process, as well as an analysis of household profiles and needs. The results indicated that the household profile is very diverse in low-income housing. Thus, demand for customization is high, as well as attributed to different products’ characteristics. However, the product development process in this context was found to be very different from a process of mass customized products. Despite the need to modify such process, it was identified that mass customization can be achieved in a variety of ways, and does not necessarily imply on the modernization of construction techniques. However, a major challenge for achieving higher customization in this context seems to be related to the programs’ rules and how it restraints innovation and diversity. Keywords: product development process, low-income housing, mass customization, value managemen

    Lean manual assembly 4.0: A systematic review

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    In a demand context of mass customization, shifting towards the mass personalization of products, assembly operations face the trade-off between highly productive automated systems and flexible manual operators. Novel digital technologies—conceptualized as Industry 4.0—suggest the possibility of simultaneously achieving superior productivity and flexibility. This article aims to address how Industry 4.0 technologies could improve the productivity, flexibility and quality of assembly operations. A systematic literature review was carried out, including 234 peer-reviewed articles from 2010–2020. As a result, the analysis was structured addressing four sets of research questions regarding (1) assembly for mass customization; (2) Industry 4.0 and performance evaluation; (3) Lean production as a starting point for smart factories, and (4) the implications of Industry 4.0 for people in assembly operations. It was found that mass customization brings great complexity that needs to be addressed at different levels from a holistic point of view; that Industry 4.0 offers powerful tools to achieve superior productivity and flexibility in assembly; that Lean is a great starting point for implementing such changes; and that people need to be considered central to Assembly 4.0. Developing methodologies for implementing Industry 4.0 to achieve specific business goals remains an open research topic

    The relevance of outsourcing and leagile strategies in performance optimization of an integrated process planning and scheduling

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    Over the past few years growing global competition has forced the manufacturing industries to upgrade their old production strategies with the modern day approaches. As a result, recent interest has been developed towards finding an appropriate policy that could enable them to compete with others, and facilitate them to emerge as a market winner. Keeping in mind the abovementioned facts, in this paper the authors have proposed an integrated process planning and scheduling model inheriting the salient features of outsourcing, and leagile principles to compete in the existing market scenario. The paper also proposes a model based on leagile principles, where the integrated planning management has been practiced. In the present work a scheduling problem has been considered and overall minimization of makespan has been aimed. The paper shows the relevance of both the strategies in performance enhancement of the industries, in terms of their reduced makespan. The authors have also proposed a new hybrid Enhanced Swift Converging Simulated Annealing (ESCSA) algorithm, to solve the complex real-time scheduling problems. The proposed algorithm inherits the prominent features of the Genetic Algorithm (GA), Simulated Annealing (SA), and the Fuzzy Logic Controller (FLC). The ESCSA algorithm reduces the makespan significantly in less computational time and number of iterations. The efficacy of the proposed algorithm has been shown by comparing the results with GA, SA, Tabu, and hybrid Tabu-SA optimization methods

    Mass Customization Strategies And Their Relationship To Lean Production In The Homebuilding Industry

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    Current housing trends point to an increasing interest from homebuyers to demand houses that reflect their personal and unique styles, and which are individually configured according to these needs (NAHB, 2004). These homebuyers in turn are unwilling to settle for standard models that sacrifice what they really want in a home. At the same time this creates pressure on builders who are reluctant to sacrifice production efficiencies by deviating from standard models. Such customization desired by demanding customers can disrupt the entire estimating, production, delivery and management process, making it even more difficult to manage homebuilding efficiently and effectively. The question faced by homebuilders in this conditions is, how to manage this trade-off and deliver exactly what homebuyers want, at reasonable prices and lead times with minimal disruptions in efficiencies. Mass Customization (MC) is an emerging production paradigm that seeks to manage the trade-offs between product variety and mass efficiency, while fulfilling individual customer requirements. The general purpose of this research is to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of housing production through the implementation of mass customization strategies. More specifically, this research focuses on the study of the production system through the application of lean production principles, as an approach to enable mass customization. This study first characterizes how much product choice is currently being offered by U.S. homebuilders and what is the impact of customization on production efficiency; and then focuses on the evaluation of the relationships between mass customization and lean production principles. Results revealed that homebuilders offering increased product choice are likely to suffer poorer labor productivity, greater inventory, higher production costs, more quality issues, less satisfied homebuyers, and lower space efficiency. In general, operational performance deteriorated with an increase in product choice. Therefore, industrialized housing manufacturers have not reached the ideal of mass customization and are paying a price for offering more choices to their customers. Homebuilders could mitigate these challenges by using lean concepts. In general, case studies showed that product choice does not necessarily make the implementation of lean concepts more difficult. Some lean concepts, like workload balancing and standardizing tasks, clearly facilitated the handling of product choice. Other lean concepts, like creating a continuous process flow, can be made to work well, even with increased choice. Case study results suggested that good concepts for lean (e.g., efficient continuous flow, effective pull system, workload leveling, defect-free processes, standard tasks, good visual controls, and reliable technology) were also good concepts for (or easily accommodated) handling a range of product choice
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