The Understanding Among Contractors In Additive Manufacturing Technology In Local Construction Industry

Abstract

Additive manufacturing is one of the key elements in industrial revolution 4.0, new to construction industry and have potential to enormously impact the industry due to its ability to disrupt the existing construction supply chain direction and order. The construction players especially the contractors are expected to be the first entity to experience the effect and widely use the technology but up to this stage, the contractors' understanding towards the technology are unknown. At the same time, the Malaysian construction industry suffer lack of responsive towards technology that might one day be left behind if it unable to adopt to the new technology. Therefore, the study is conducted to identify the understanding of local contractors about additive manufacturing in construction industry. The findings can be used to further plan how to overcome challenges in industrial revolution 4.0 environment. A quantitative approach through survey has been engaged and distributed randomly to contractors via emails and by hand. Besides, literature reviews have been conducted to deeply understand the concept of additive manufacturing, its impact and implication as well as the future prospect. The result is analysed based on mean score and able to identify that the contractor does not has the understanding in additive manufacturing technology in local construction industry.

Thematic Trends in Industry 4.0 Revolution Potential towards Sustainability in the Construction Industry

“…Construction firms would have to rely on governing bodies and authorities to support these initiatives through funding programs and collaborative partnerships. Another study looking into the use of additive components in the building by local contractors backs this up [34].…”

“…It should be noted that issues and challenges refer to industry challenges, while technology and tools discuss technological innovation; some of the articles discuss information technology in terms of software and hardware usage, others discuss construction management, and several articles discuss education related to IR4.0. Zabidin [32] Igwe [33] Ismail [34] Kavuri [35] Lau [36] Mahmud [37] Riazi [38] You and Feng [39] Lee [40] Belle [41] Yousif [76] In Table 4, the results show that the Engineering, Construction, and Architectural Management journal had the most published papers on this topic, with four publications, followed by Sustainability (Switzerland) with three, and the other journals with two and one article, respectively. To sum up, this section responds to RQ1.…”

“…The development of other industries will leave the construction sector behind if no application facilitates the related tasks (Figure 8). 3, the second number after the colon is the quotation, and p is the page [33,34,46,51,52,59,63,65,66].…”

“…Therefore, the potential of these technologies for improved project and cost performance should be fully realized to maximize client spending [33]. As an alternative to traditional formative and subtractive manufacturing, additive manufacturing (AM) is an advanced manufacturing method that refers to the process of assembling materials to produce products from three-dimensional (3D) model data, often layer by 3, the second number after the colon is the quotation, and p is the page [33,34,46,51,52,59,63,65,66].…”

“…It also creates new career opportunities that meet a variety of needs. Therefore, switching to IR4.0 is beneficial for the industry to remain competitive [34]. In addition, a company's business performance can be affected by national and industry conditions, and unique environmental elements, government regulations, special events, and accidents can all impact business performance.…”