TY  - CONF
TI  - Strategic Levers for Prefabrication in Construction: an Economic Case Study
C1  - Osaka and Kyoto, Japan
C3  - Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC 33)
SP  - 717
EP  - 728
PY  - 2025
DO  - 10.24928/2025/0115
AU  - Lauble, Svenja
AU  - Steuer, Dominik
AU  - Großmann, Helena
AU  - Zielke, Philipp
AD  - Research Fellow, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Institute of Technology and Management in Construction, svenja.lauble@kit.edu, orcid.org/0000-0002-0376-1791
AD  - Chief Executive Office, Steuer Group, dominik@steuer.group
AD  - M.Sc. Student, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), helena.grossmann@student.kit.edu
AD  - Research Fellow, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Institute of Technology and Management in Construction, philipp.zielke@kit.edu, orcid.org/0009-0001-5241-8666
ED  - Seppänen, Olli 
ED  - Koskela, Lauri 
ED  - Murata , Koichi 
AB  - The prefabrication industry is expected to grow and offer significant benefits to the construction industry, including improved efficiency, cost savings, quality and sustainability. Despite these benefits, there is a gap in the literature regarding the strategic levers that determine the optimal level of prefabrication. This study aims to investigate three levels of prefabrication (L1: brick walls, L2: brick walls with electrical installations and L3: brick walls with electrical installations and plastering) from an economic point of view. Levers from the literature were validated and supplemented based on an expert workshop with a small to medium-sized supplier of prefabricated elements and construction service provider in southern Germany. The economic feasibility was assessed using sensitivity analysis, focusing on cost drivers for organizational effort and increased efficiency. The results showed that higher levels of prefabrication (L2 and L3) lead to significant efficiency gains, especially in the best-case scenario. Organizational effort increases with the level of prefabrication, but at L3, efficiency improvements outweigh complexity, reducing costs such as material savings and mitigation of weather-related disruptions. Prefabrication, when strategically integrated, not only achieves the same goals as lean construction activities such as workflow efficiency and waste minimization, but the economic benefits increase with the level of prefabrication. This means that, under stable conditions, a high level of prefabrication is economically viable.
KW  - Prefabrication
KW  - Production Processes
KW  - Level
KW  - Profitability
KW  - Case Study
PB  - 
T2  - Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC 33)
DA  - 2025/06/02
CY  - Osaka and Kyoto, Japan
L1  - http://iglc.net/Papers/Details/2314/pdf
L2  - http://iglc.net/Papers/Details/2314
N1  - Export Date: 02 June 2025
DB  - IGLC.net
DP  - IGLC
LA  - English
ER  -