Decision Support System for Manufactured Housing Facility Layout
Publication: Journal of Architectural Engineering
Volume 14, Issue 2
Abstract
Productivity improvement of manufactured housing (MH) production systems has been a great concern to manufacturers and production managers. Studies show that a typical manufactured housing plant fails to produce at desired capacity and production rate because of several shortcomings. The evaluation of the production system efficiency in the factory is essential for meeting the growing demand of customers with respect to design and size of the housing product. It is imperative to explore alternative layout designs that would be more efficient and productive. A decision support system (DSS) is proposed to assist the user in selecting an efficient layout design matching specified requirements and business constraints. The DSS framework covers interrelated factors of: (1) the market demand; (2) MH organization; (3) MH production process; and (4) MH production planning and facility design. Existing MH factories can utilize simulation and optimization components of the DSS in streamlining their activities and locating then solving potential bottlenecks. Additionally, the DSS can be used in selecting optimal production system layout for new plant design.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
References
Abu Hammad, A. (2004). “A decision support system for manufactured housing production process planning and facility layout.” Ph.D. dissertation, Univ. of Cincinnati, Cincinnati.
Abu Hammad, A., Hastak, M., and Syal, M. (2003). “Simulation model for manufactured housing processes.” Proc., Computing in Civil Engineering, ASCE, Reston, Va., 286–297.
Abu Hammad, A., Hastak, M., and Syal, M., (2004). “Comparative study of manufactured housing production systems.” J. Archit. Eng., 10(4), 136–142.
Bernhardt, A. D. (1980). Building tomorrow: The mobile/manufactured housing industry, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Lee, A., and Englin, J. (1989). “Using a model and empirical data to analyze manufactured home conservation retrofit.” Energy Build., 13, 73–83.
Mehrotra, N. (2002) “Manufactured housing production plant layout-design process.” Master’s thesis, Michigan State Univ., East Lansing, Mich.
Partnership for the Advancement of Technology in Housing (PATH). (2002). “The third road mapping on the whole house and process redesign.” ⟨www.pathnet.org⟩ (May 5, 2005).
Scholl, A. (1999). Balancing and sequencing of assembly lines, 2nd Ed., Physica-Verlag, Heidelberg.
U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Census. (2007). “Cost and size comparison for manufactured and built homes.” ⟨http://www.census.gov/const/mhs/sitebuiltvsmh.pdf⟩.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Architectural Engineering
Volume 14 • Issue 2 • June 2008
Pages: 36 - 46
Copyright
© 2008 ASCE.
History
Received: May 10, 2005
Accepted: May 21, 2007
Published online: Jun 1, 2008
Published in print: Jun 2008
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.