Visilean® application for monitoring and control of pre-fabricated concrete panels

Abstract

Good design and construction planning are essential to ensure the quality of the final product. To do this, it is necessary to develop an integrated organizational system for production and work schedule control, just in time material delivery, job site layout planning and real-time task management. The main objective of this work is to propose a method to improve process flow planning of prefabricated concrete panels based on the software application that uses Visilean® to monitor the movement of the parts in the factory. Visilean® model was useful for the visual verification of project, production and installation processes allowing suggestions for improvements to operational procedures. Research’s contribution is to propose a method for integrated planning that favors scenarios creation to anticipate possible problems that usually occur in both production flow and information flow. In practice, the researchers created a simple interface that allows operators to visualize times, production services and their sequence in real-time. Better visualization of the processes and control has a great impact on the final product’s quality, as well as, timely delivery and improved communication between project, production and construction teams. For future research, the inclusion of the Internet of Things for process automation will be an essential complement to the model.

Lean and Iot Integration to Improve Flow in Construction Prefabrication: a Proposed Framework

“…To do so, the proposed framework tries to cover deliverables from the planning and control tool (LPS), application of JIT and pull signals, and development of IoT architecture to continuously track, monitor, and localize prefabricated components. The proposed framework was based on studying different cases in offsite and onsite construction (Chen et al, 2020;Dave et al, 2016;Kanai et al, 2021;Li et al, 2018;Von Heyl & Teizer, 2017;Xu et al, 2018) and based on studying a process map in a prefabrication company in Canada.…”

“…This synchronization has to cover all flow phases starting from the arrival of the raw materials at the factory and ending with the onsite assembly. Failure to achieve such synchronization can prohibit the delivery of materials or components and cause an increase in time and cost of the project (Kanai et al, 2021). The heavy dependence on the critical path method (CPM), delivery of materials based on pushing strategies, and lack of focus on optimizing the overall production system in the factory and site are among the most affecting factors that limit the flow synchronization (Mossman & Sarhan, 2021).…”

“…The heavy dependence on the critical path method (CPM), delivery of materials based on pushing strategies, and lack of focus on optimizing the overall production system in the factory and site are among the most affecting factors that limit the flow synchronization (Mossman & Sarhan, 2021). The use of lean principles and tools such as the Last Planner System® (LPS), Jus-In-Time (JIT), and Kanban or pull signals can help mitigate the impact of these problems by focusing on the end-to-end process flow, collaboratively working and planning based-on what can be done rather than what should be done, and produce and deliver only what is needed and when it is needed (Kanai et al, 2021;Mossman & Sarhan, 2021).…”

“…Therefore, there have been, recently, various efforts to support lean-IoT integration. These efforts have resulted in some lean-IoT applications and software such as Visilean®, KanBIM™, and others (Dave et al, 2016;Kanai et al, 2021;Sacks et al, 2011). Nevertheless, the focus on synchronizing flow between offsite and onsite operations and integrating LPS planning results in this synchronization is still not widely implemented.…”