TY - JOUR
T1 - Productivity of digital fabrication in construction
T2 - Cost and time analysis of a robotically built wall
AU - García de Soto, Borja
AU - Agustí-Juan, Isolda
AU - Hunhevicz, Jens
AU - Joss, Samuel
AU - Graser, Konrad
AU - Habert, Guillaume
AU - Adey, Bryan T.
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by the National Centre of Competence in Research, NCCR Digital Fabrication, which was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (project number 51NF40_141853 ). The authors would like to thank the support from the Mesh Mould Wall team who provided data for the simulation and granted access to the construction site. Special thanks are given to Pascal Breitenstein from ERNE for his support during the work conducted in this study. Thank you also to the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments which have helped to improve the clarity of the paper.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2018/8
Y1 - 2018/8
N2 - Although automation has been actively and successfully used in different industries since the 1970s, its application to the construction industry is still rare or not fully exploited. In order to help provide the construction industry with an additional incentive to adopt more automation, an investigation was undertaken to assess the effects of digital fabrication (dfab) on productivity by analyzing the cost and time required for the construction of a robotically-fabricated complex concrete wall onsite. After defining the different tasks for the conventional and robotically fabricated concrete wall, data was collected from different sources and used in a simulation to describe the distribution of time and cost for the different construction scenarios. In the example, it was found that productivity is higher when the robotic construction method is used for complex walls, indicating that it is possible to obtain significant economic benefit from the use of additive dfab to construct complex structures. Further research is required to assess the social impacts of using dfab.
AB - Although automation has been actively and successfully used in different industries since the 1970s, its application to the construction industry is still rare or not fully exploited. In order to help provide the construction industry with an additional incentive to adopt more automation, an investigation was undertaken to assess the effects of digital fabrication (dfab) on productivity by analyzing the cost and time required for the construction of a robotically-fabricated complex concrete wall onsite. After defining the different tasks for the conventional and robotically fabricated concrete wall, data was collected from different sources and used in a simulation to describe the distribution of time and cost for the different construction scenarios. In the example, it was found that productivity is higher when the robotic construction method is used for complex walls, indicating that it is possible to obtain significant economic benefit from the use of additive dfab to construct complex structures. Further research is required to assess the social impacts of using dfab.
KW - 3D printing
KW - Additive manufacturing
KW - Construction automation
KW - Construction industry
KW - Digital fabrication
KW - Industrialized construction
KW - Labor productivity
KW - Robot system
KW - Robotic construction
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U2 - 10.1016/j.autcon.2018.04.004
DO - 10.1016/j.autcon.2018.04.004
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85046347842
SN - 0926-5805
VL - 92
SP - 297
EP - 311
JO - Automation in Construction
JF - Automation in Construction
ER -