Computer aided manufacturing for prefabricated concrete buildings

Prefabrication is an effective form of building construction in terms of function, quality, time, cost, safety and the productive use of labour and other resources. Unlike automated manufacturing industries, however, the prefabricated building manufacturing industry is manually intensive and its process information lacks integration, and interdependency. The project presented in this thesis considers automation and integration of the building components' manufacturing process as an ultimate goal. An initial review of the current structure and practices of the pre-cast industry is presented. The thesis then discusses a prototype computer-aided manufacturing information system that automates the process of information flow, tabling and scheduling and facilitates data exchange between design, fabrication and erection, using standardised objects and procedures. The system has been the product of adaptation of a selection of a set of computer software applications from those most commonly used by practitioners in the building industry. The major element of the work in developing of the system is the modelling of the process attributes and the structuring of data objects. The system incorporates the Access Basic, Visual Basic and SQL programming systems as elements of integration. The system can effectively generate the production schedules and reports and model the manufacturing attributes of a given factory. The system is able to provide a platform for exchanging manufacturing related data between the diverse software packages and allow access for multi users. It is concluded that this approach has the potential to improve efficiency because. The exchange of one global information set between all business departments eliminates double handling of information. The easy tracking and control of production information flow improves the overall control of materials and stock and rationalises the use of storage space. The linking of production schedules with erection programmes provides a logical interdependency between construction sites and factory. The standardisation of information entities facilitates monitoring of all manufacturing activities and helps in reducing overheads.