Precast supply chain management in off-site construction: A critical literature review

Off-site construction is a rising topic in both academic research and industrial applications because of its potential to bring about high-level of industrialization, environmental benefits, and sustainability in the built environment. Precast supply chain, as a vital connection between construction sites and off-site plants, is the focus of many recent studies. While these studies have greatly advanced precast supply chain management (PSCM), a critical analysis to summarize the recent research, to identify research gaps, and to inform future research needs is largely missing in the field of precast supply chain management. The overarching goal of this paper is to create a taxonomy to properly classify existing studies in precast supply chain management so as to reveal research gaps and suggest future research opportunities. The specific tasks in this review project include: (1) conducting bibliographic categorizations with regard to journals, years and geographic distributions of publications; (2) identifying the citation correlations and formulating the keyword connection networks; (3) classifying the literature based on research topics and highlighting the state of the art pertaining to each subtopic. The in-depth analysis shows that the studies on precast production are dominant in the PSCM domain. The major research approaches used in existing studies include the genetic algorithm, simulation, RFID (Radio Frequency Identification), and BIM (Building Information Modeling). At last, the possible future research focuses are highlighted, such as dynamic disturbances management, smart precast supply chain, coordination among participants, simultaneously optimizing scheduling and resource allocation. (C) 2019 Published by Elsevier Ltd.