Design for manufacture and assembly in offsite construction and relationship with concurrent engineering

This chapter discusses the optimisation methodology is validated and its computational efficiency is tested using real-world production data from several offsite manufacturers and examines the Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DfMA) discussion by identifying opportunities for future research. Quantitative metrics such as monetary value of final assemblies are linked to the achievement of DfMA objectives and satisfaction of constraints. DfMA optimises the process of product design and development considering all production requirements. The selection of subassemblies out of catalogues and increasing the purchased part content are other DFMA and Concurrent Engineering (CE) principles providing significant advantages in product and process development. The implementation of concurrent engineering and DfMA principles minimises time and cost of bringing new products to market. Although improving construction production performance by implementing DfMA and CE principles has been the focus of research in academic literature, the evaluation of quantitative approaches has been rather sparse in comparison.