Configuration of Platform Architectures in Construction

Sammanfattning: Construction is often defined as a project-oriented industry that develops complex one-of-a-kind products using an engineer-to-order (ETO) design process. The technical solutions that are developed in specific projects often have integral product architectures that are difficult to re-use in continuous improvement processes. The ETO process also means that very few components can be produced before being ordered, which is necessary for creating economies of scale in production. In contrast, Modify-To-Order (MTO) Configure-To-Order (CTO) or Select variant-To-Order (STO) design processes based on theories of mass customization reuse technical solutions from earlier projects to varying degrees. However, many researchers argue that results and theories from the manufacturing industry cannot be used in the contexts of construction because each construction project has different functional requirements and local site conditions whose interaction mandates the creation of unique end products that cannot be modularized as is done in manufacturing industries. The purpose of this thesis was to investigate how mass customization principles could be utilized in the design of construction products, especially how the adoption of platform architectures and configurators could support the reuse of technical solutions between projects. Several case studies of projects using different specification levels (MTO, CTO and STO) were conducted to test theories of mass customization in the context of construction. The results obtained show that when working at the MTO and CTO specification levels, platform architectures should be based on modules that can be developed incrementally. STO products can be developed with integral product architectures, but if the needs of customers in the target market segment change this presents a risk of ad-hoc end product customization that will adversely affect the production system downstream in the value chain. For all studied specification levels, it is important to determine whether the target market volume is sufficient to justify the cost of developing a product platform. The introduction of design modules in modular platform architectures enables the development and use of configurators in ETO construction design processes. Such tools allow MTO platforms to be customized using a mixture of traditional ETO design and the configuration of predefined modules. Configuration tools for module customization at the MTO and CTO levels must therefore be integrated with the traditional design tools used in construction. The configuration of modular platform architectures also facilitates the effective use of information and its transfer between domains. As the use of pre-defined modules in the product specification process increases, the need to involve multiple design disciplines decreases. At the STO level, the design work can be reduced to such an extent that customization can be achieved using web-based configurators.Overall, the results presented in this thesis indicate that the Products in Product mass customization concept introduced by Erixon (1998) can be implemented at multiple specification levels in the traditional design of construction products. By introducing the new design module category into the platform architecture, predefined construction product platforms can be integrated with the traditional ETO design process and developed incrementally.