Thomas Ditlev Brunoe

Factors Affecting Schedule Delay, Cost Overrun, and Quality Level in Public Construction Projects

AbstractAs a result of the loss of financial resources and the need to optimize projects, academics, politicians, and the construction industry have become increasingly aware of the challenges presented by the frequent time and cost overruns and reduced quality of construction projects. The purpose of this study was to analyze the factors that project managers experience as having the greatest effect on time, cost, and quality, and to discover whether the effects of these factors are significantly different from each other. A questionnaire with 26 factors identified from interviews was sent to the full population of publicly employed project managers. Factors were ranked using the relative importance index and tested for significant differences using Friedman’s test. Wilcoxon’s test was used in a post-hoc analysis. From the findings it was determined that the most influential factor for time is unsettled or lack of project funding; for cost, errors or omissions in consultant material; and for quality, err...

Reconfigurable Manufacturing on Multiple Levels: Literature Review and Research Directions

Reconfigurable manufacturing has been widely labelled the manufacturing paradigm of the future, due to its ability to rapidly and cost-efficiently respond to changing market conditions. Manufacturing reconfigurability can be dealt with at various levels of the factory, and includes multiple design and operational issues related to both physical and logical reconfigurations. The purpose of this paper is to review state-of-the-art literature on reconfigurable manufacturing and provide an overview of the current body of research, by assessing which structuring levels of the factory and corresponding research issues that are dealt with. Conclusively, currently unexplored areas and interesting issues that could be addressed in future research are identified.

A case of cost estimation in an engineer-to-order company moving towards mass customisation

Engineer-to-order companies have a tremendous product variety compared to mass produced or even mass customised products, implying high costs in both business and production processes. In recent years however some engineer-to-order companies have acknowledged the great potential in applying principles and methods from mass customisation to reduce the cost of variety, including modularisation, product configuration and process automation. This paper presents a case study of applying a statistical method for cost estimation for quotation purposes in an engineer-to-order environment, where cost estimation can be resource intensive and time consuming. The method finds cost critical parameters within a product family. The potential benefits from applying the method includes: simplifying the quotation process and reducing the resources needed to issue a quotation. However, due to the nature of the method consistent data quality and substantial historical data are required.

Investigating the Potential in Reconfigurable Manufacturing: A Case-Study from Danish Industry

In today’s global manufacturing environment, manufactures must respond to the challenges of quickly adopting new technologies and provide an increasing number of product varieties, while continuously increasing cost-efficiency. Reconfigurable manufacturing systems meet these challenges through rapid and efficient changes in functionality and capacity. The purpose of this paper is to investigate a practical approach for evaluating the potential of reconfigurability in manufacturing companies, through a case-study in Danish industry. In this approach, historical production data is analyzed and focus is explicitly on capacity savings, which makes it applicable for decision support in companies that are in a transition towards becoming reconfigurable.

Towards an engineering change management maturity grid

Engineering changes are inevitable, and their effective management (ECM) is essential in order for companies to sustain their competitiveness. The challenges in industry on ensuring an efficient ECM have been evident for years. The literature on ECM, however, falls short in giving comprehensive guidance for improvement. This article takes the first steps in developing a holistic maturity framework that is designed to guide improvement effort within ECM. The result of the development, an ECM maturity grid, is presented. The grid is a multilevel framework, and offers maturity assessment on a five-level scale, within five overall process areas, and 26 sub-process areas. A design science approach, aligned with a process for developing maturity grids, is followed to ensure a structured and deliberate approach. The paper contributes furthermore with a comprehensive overview of the critical success factors for an efficient ECM, which is used as basis for identifying the process areas of the maturity grid. Based on an industrial validation by 14 domain experts, it is concluded that the ECM maturity grid offers a valuable basis for providing targeted guidance on how to achieve an efficient ECM. Further development is, however, needed, for the grid to support maturity assessment.

A participatory systems design methodology for changeable manufacturing systems

The ability to adapt to changes in products, processes and technologies is a key competitive factor. Changeable manufacturing paradigms have emerged to address this need, but the industrial implementation remains challenging. In this paper, a participatory design methodology for changeable manufacturing systems is proposed, including requirements specification, selection of appropriate manufacturing paradigm and suitable physical and logical enablers. The methodology supports companies in determining the potential for and mechanisms of transitioning towards changeable manufacturing systems, based on knowledge of products, production, technologies and facilities. The developed methodology is applicable to both new and existing manufacturing systems. It is demonstrated in two industrial cases which highlight its applicability and differences in the appropriate recommended manufacturing systems transition towards changeability as a result of differences in manufacturing characteristics, change requirements and enablers.

Identification of drivers for modular production

Todays competitive environment in industry creates a need for companies to enhance their ability to introduce new products faster. To increase ramp-up speed reconfigurable manufacturing systems is a promising concept, however to implement this production platforms and modular manufacturing is required. This paper presents an analysis whether and which module drivers from general product development can be applied to the development process of a modular manufacturing system. The result is a compiled list of modular drivers for manufacturing and examples of their use.

Mass Customisation Assessment and Measurement Framework

Mass customisation involves three fundamental capabilities: Robust Process Design, Choice Navigation and Solution Space Development. A Survey has indicated that a number of companies have ceased mass customizing less than one year after initiating the effort. One reason for this is poor knowledge about the mass customisation progress and guidance of continuous improvement. This paper will conceptualize a framework for measurement and assessment of a company’s mass customisation performance, utilizing metrics within the three fundamental capabilities. By assessing performance companies can identify within which areas improvement would increase competitiveness the most and ultimately enabling more efficient transition to mass customisation.

Application of mass customization in the construction industry

This paper is based on the assumption of that Danish companies in the construction industry can benefit from the advantages inherent in the use of Mass Customization.

Mass Customization Measurements Metrics

A recent survey has indicated that 17 % of companies have ceased mass customizing less than 1 year after initiating the effort. This paper presents measurement for a company’s mass customization performance, utilizing metrics within the three fundamental capabilities: robust process design, choice navigation, and solution space development. A mass customizer when assessing performance with these metrics can identify within which areas improvement would increase competitiveness the most and enable more efficient transition to mass customization.