Modelling and analysis of two production solutions for precast concrete elements: A petri-nets approach

Abstract

The adoption of precast concrete construction has been increasingly emphasised globally, due to its advancements in productivity, waste management, cost control, quality and safety. Meanwhile, the production solutions differ greatly in the off-site plants in terms of traditional stationary production and modern circulation production with different levels of automation. Practical cases show that improper selection or upgrade of production solution could lead to resource slack or even business failure, and there is limited knowledge to quantitively support the decision making. Furthermore, existing works seldom dig deep into the fundamental setup of the production plant, and reckon without the stochasticity and variability of production operation. Therefore, this paper aims to develop an analytical model to facilitate the understanding of the production solutions of precast concrete elements, which should further support the decision making in factory planning or upgrade towards increased level of automation. Stochastic Petri-nets approach has been applied, with stochastic features embraced, to graphically modelled stationary and circulation solutions. Simulation and comparative performance analysis was conducted with a numerical case study. Results demonstrate that stationary solution can achieve even higher outputs during production period provided that enough resources are given, whilst circulation solution has a more flexible and stable production.