International Conference on Construction and Real Estate Management 2016
Developing Product Configurators in the AEC Industry
Publication: ICCREM 2016: BIM Application and Off-Site Construction
ABSTRACT
Most efforts towards industrialization in the construction industry have focused on production processes; relatively few have targeted the design process because it is assumed to be creative, ad hoc, and iterative. Previous research thus often emphasizes product development but not configurator development even though the two should ideally be interlinked. Here, the theories of product platform development, modularization, and product configuration are used to develop a process model in order to improve the design process by increasing its degree of industrialization. The model clarifies the relationships between the product architecture, modular flexibility, and configurator programming, which must be considered when developing configurable product platforms. The model is validated through a case study of a project where a configurator for walls is developed. The product configurator developed using the new model allowed designers to customize wall elements by varying their geometry, content, aesthetics, and energy requirements. It is shown that adopting the developed model facilitates and enables the industrialization of engineering design processes.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
ICCREM 2016: BIM Application and Off-Site Construction
Pages: 135 - 145
Editors: Yaowu Wang, Ph.D., Professor, Harbin Institute of Technology, Mohamed Al-Hussein, Ph.D., Professor, University of Alberta, Geoffrey Q. P. Shen, Ph.D., Professor, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and Yimin Zhu, Ph.D., Professor, Louisiana State University
ISBN (Online): 978-0-7844-8027-4
Copyright
© 2017 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Published online: Aug 14, 2017
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