UC Berkeley

Mass timber (MT) is a sustainable material increasingly used for both single- and multi-story buildings due to technological developments and evolving building codes. As demand increases, new MT supply systems are emerging. These systems include facilities where harvested timber is cut, glued, and made into materials subsequently shipped to other facilities where they are fabricated into structural components. These components are then shipped and erected on-site. MT components demand fabrication and handling practices that differ significantly from those used in more typical construction systems involving precast concrete- or structural steel components. In this paper, we describe a supply system for MT and outline a discrete-event simulation model to characterize the features of that system. Currently, we have only a preliminary model. Then, we introduce principles from Lean Construction and Operations Science to illustrate how MT supply systems can be made “greener.” The objective is to build a configurator that integrates product and process design and incorporates metrics pertaining to operational efficiency and the environmental sustainability potential of MT systems so that judicious trade-offs can be made.