Abstract
Focusing on the Italian market, according to ISTAT surveys published in 2011, building industry (BI) is one of the less efficient industries and the productivity gap with other industries is growing faster. This gap is due to two main reasons. Firstly, BI can be defined as an engineer-to-order (ETO) industry according to Wortmann classification. ETO means that the final product (building) needs to be designed and to be engineered when customers deliver their order, and it implies that every final product is almost unique. Secondly, despite supply-chain system is similar to other ETO industries, BI identifies different responsible figures for each process usually structured in a serial workflow. Serial workflow reduces the efficiency of information management by enhancing the propagation of errors.
Today, the challenge for BI is to reduce the productivity gap with other industries by reducing the wastes of resources and improving the overall efficiency of the supply-chain system. Improving the overall efficiency in BI may generate huge benefits: reduce social and economic costs, reduce the environmental footprint and enhance the quality of the final products (buildings).
This paper will discuss the early first steps of a research activity that aim at testing whether parametric and generative design techniques may offer a solution for improving design and engineering process towards a more efficient manufacturing process. Focusing on the case study of the glued-laminated-timber industry, the main goal of the research is to highlight benefits and criticisms on the overall supply-chain system in the BI and to identify possible strategies in order to introduce these techniques in the ordinary supply-chain system.