A production modeling with genetic algorithms for a stationary pre-cast supply chain

Material costs comprise major portion of total costs in construction projects. In developed countries, 40–45% of total construction cost is for materials alone. In some developing countries, material costs make up as much as 60–65% of the total cost for a construction project (Formoso & Revelo, 1999). This research studied the relationships between pre-cast’s production operations and site construction activities to develop a pre-cast production planning model. The model was established to meet the site construction demands for pre-cast elements, satisfy internal resource constraints, and optimize total production costs of production resources. The algorithms employed for solving the pre-cast production planning model were genetic algorithms and the branch-and-bound method. The near-optimal solutions were evaluated with the quality of total production cost. In the empirical study, an actual case was used to evaluate the performance of the model and algorithms. The results show that the model and the solving algorithm provide better quality of solutions than the pre-caster’s production plan and improve the actual production results in the illustrative case.