FMS Approach to Construction Automation

The need to increase safety, productivity, quality, and resource efficiency in construction is a challenge to researchers that requires bold innovative changes. Technological adaptation of successful concepts from other industries to construction offers an important path for innovative progress. This paper provides insight into some central aspects of flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) that show the greatest transferability to construction. A flexible manufacturing system is a production facility consisting of computer‐controlled machines, or work stations, connected by an automated material‐handling system, which is used to produce a variety of parts in low and medium volume. The state of the art in automated material handling and process planning is presented as a basis for construction automation, a new field of civil engineering. Ongoing research in flexible construction systems is described, and directions for future research needed to establish a knowledge base of principles relating to construction automation are outlined.