A synergistic supply chain enhancing offsite manufacturing uptake in australian house building

Abstract

Offsite manufacturing (OSM) could become a key innovation for the future of Australian house building due to its capacity in meeting the growing housing demand, green construction and fewer requirements for labour force. OSM is a modern construction method where house building involves offsite factories and onsite construction. Three major challenges for managing the two working sites are broken junction, jumbled on-site process and vague demands from unclear customers. The two sites have several forms of non-value added activities. On the other hand, the house customisations add more complexities to the design specification that leads to slow response to achieve house customer demand in short time. This paper aims at introducing a synergistic supply chain to manage the OSM in Australia. The synergistic supply chain incorporates lean and agile concepts using the decoupling point. The key characteristic of lean and agile is removing waste and the market responsiveness respectively. This synergistic supply chain offers four house building strategies: BTS, ATO, DTO and SBH. The strategies attempt to answer different situations of house customer demand and capacity of builders and to increase the supply of housing in Australia. Keywords: Australian housing, offsite manufacturing, synergistic supply chain.