Leagile Strategies for Optimizing the Delivery of Prefabricated House Building Projects

Abstract

Australian housing supply has not been responded at a rate commensurate with its growing demand. Residential housing sector is facing this serious shortage issue by actively developing and effectively using new construction material, processes and practices for sustaining its competitive advantage over other construction sectors in the Australian context. The Construction 2020 report confirmed prefabrication/off-site manufacturing (OSM) as a critical vision for the Australian construction industry’s future, as OSM provides opportunities for not only increased productivity and safety, but also decreased cost. It also has the capability of meeting the growing housing demand within the extant level of skilled labour. By combining lean and agile concepts, OSM’s supply responsiveness and efficiency can be intensified. The current research studies the association between demand–supply housing imbalance factors using mixed methods from literature and interviews. Literature has documented four main factors that drive this imbalance: (1) housing completion time; (2) cost of a finished house; (3) customer preferences and (4) level of skilled labour. Interviews with 13 industry professionals identified the four main leagile strategies used to deliver prefabricated building projects. Literature and interview findings supported the development and validation of multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) model comprising and incorporating these factors (and subfactors) and the four leagile strategies. The choice of the appropriate strategy to address the studied factors within the Australian context was optimized using analytic hierarchy process (AHP). The results from the AHP model show the suitability of applying each strategy at different degrees as influenced by the tested factors.