Prefabrication experiments - 329 - Manufacturing methodologies - 09 - Advanced Manufacturing

Modern Methods of Construction, Off-site construction, Industrialized building and Prefabrication are often cited interchangeably to denote efficient factory methodologies applied to building construction. Directing the benefits of manufacturing logistics to building, makes sense as they have bred quality and productivity in most other industries. Still, Generalized use of factory production in architecture has eluded commonplace construction. An ingrained quest for a alleged singularity has disconnected design, fabrication and construction. The evolution in information technology is outlining a digital revolution that some hope will finally tune factory production with construction. 

 

All three previous periods of industrialization, mechanization, mass production and automation generated new and faster ways of making things.  Current digitization of manufacturing, in an interesting way, federates the three previous eras; this 4rth industrial revolution introduces information technology to producing and connecting everything from, toys to clothes and anything in between. 

 

While Industry 4.0 refers to connectivity of processes and objects (IoT), advanced manufacturing (AM) includes a myriad of technologies from advanced information modelling for design, big-data metrics or management, intelligent production systems for controlling logistics, and robotic tools and devices for digital fabrication. In architecture and construction, these ideas all revert to thinking about or controlling a building and its parts before it is produced onsite. Information technology allows this process to be comprehensive and informs virtual design, fabrication and construction. The ability to apply the industrial design product prototyping process - a trial and error course of perfecting a product before it is built - reforms traditional onsite fragmentation. Construction has always been a one-off process and IT is fostering this virtual twin strategy to prototype a building virtually with all stakeholders to rationalize its completion.

 

The imposing advancements in mass timber construction over the last decades has been pushed by this prototyping process as pieces and components are designed, modelled and then precisely cut and logically identified to be arranged and assembled easily on site. The kit-of-parts industrialized construction strategy is facilitated by advanced manufacturing principles specifically from the perspective of design for manufacturing and assembly as the design process continues throughout the entire project schedule uniting design criteria, with fabrication methods and onsite logistics and management. 

WASP large-scale 3d printer