<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet href="client.xsl" type="text/xsl"?>
<article article-type="other">
<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id/>
<issn/>
<banner>
<href>banner.jpg</href>
<size width="100%"/>
</banner>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<doi>/ISEC.res.2017.24</doi>
<title-group>
<article-title>IMPROVING PRODUCTIVITY, WORKFLOW<br/>
MANAGEMENT, AND RESOURCE UTILIZATION<br/>
IN PRECAST CONSTRUCTION
</article-title>
</title-group>

<author>MEHRDAD ARASHPOUR, ERIC TOO, and TIENDUNG LE</author>

<aff>School of Property, Construction and Project Management, RMIT University,<br/>
Melbourne, Australia</aff>

</article-meta></front>
<body>
<abstract>
<title>ABSTRACT</title>
<p>Construction industry has long dealt with problems such as low productivity, unstable
workflow in projects and low utilization rate of resources. Off-site construction, which
is a hybrid of mass manufacturing and construction, has significant potential to address
aforementioned problems. In order to realize this potential, off-site construction needs
to avoid replicating the traditional subcontracting approach and therefore fragmented
practice in the construction industry. The current research focuses on restructuring the
interaction of resources by using cross-training. Findings show that cross-training
resources results in transferring excess capacity from underutilized to over utilized
resources in direct or indirect pathways. Such initiatives can significantly improve
productivity, workflow management and resource utilization in precast construction
that highly specialized resources are not required. The study contributes to the
construction management literature by providing insight into dynamics of using multiskilled
resources in off-site construction.</p>
<p><italic>Keywords: </italic>Agile workforce, Bottleneck optimization, Cross-training, Fuzzy-TOPSIS
theory, Lean production, Off-site manufacturing, Planning and control, Prefabrication,
Process optimization, Project management, Resource leveling.</p>
</abstract>
<fpdf>
<href>pdflogo.jpg</href>
<hpdf>C-7</hpdf>
</fpdf>
</body>
</article>