Mass Customization in a Knowledge-based Construction Industry for Sustainable High- performance Building Production

Today, with recurring resource shortages, striking economic crisis and evolving social standards a new paradigm arises forcing industry not only to focus on competitiveness but also on designing sustainable products and manufacturing processes with equal respect on economic, social and environmental impacts. From that point of view, industrialization has particular advantages compared to conventional construction as it allows addressing various parameters relevant for sustainable construction consequently and in a controlled and predictable way. Industrialized construction could help to reduce material and energy consumption, minimize waste production, improve safety and working conditions, support the supply with affordable housing and enable deconstruction, reuse and recycling. Throughout the recent history of industrialized construction several large-scale industry projects have been conducted and various technologies and high-tech based methods have been applied, each of them addressing a certain sustainability issue. The present paper first gives an overview over those projects, technologies and methods and further develops a framework for future industrialization in construction based on the integration of sustainable best-practices. The framework outlines how different industrialization systems and sub-systems could be integrated to ecologies of factories, intelligent devices, high-tech equipment, resources and human beings by knowledge-based systems to efficiently control economic, social and environmental impacts.