Solving What We Can’t Solve Alone

 

Fresh Eyes on Modular By Jorie Wisnefski

After my weekly call with Gary Fleisher, I couldn’t stop thinking about throughput.

Not production speed or how the factory works, but throughput.

Let me explain the difference as I see it.

We can make a factory faster at cutting, assembling, or finishing modules and still fail to move more product through the system.

Where ERP Fits In

A factory doesn’t operate in isolation. Think about the journey…order → planning → ERP → purchasing → inventory → production → quality control → staging → transportation → foundation at the jobsite.

Every handoff is an opportunity for the system to slow down.

If the ERP doesn’t accurately communicate what needs to be built, the factory starts with bad information. If inventory isn’t synchronized with production, an efficient production line can sit waiting for material. If production gets ahead of staging or transportation, we may have simply moved the bottleneck somewhere else, as I’ve written about before.

Transportation is particularly interesting in modular. The finished product itself creates constraints that don’t exist in conventional manufacturing. A module can be completed, inspected, and ready to go, but if it’s sitting in a yard waiting for a truck, it isn’t fully through the system.

What If the Skilled Labor Shortage Is Really a Training Shortage?

The construction industry says it needs approximately 349,000 additional workers in 2026 just to meet current demand. In 2027, that number is projected to jump to about 456,000 as spending on infrastructure and manufacturing begins growing again.

Those are not small numbers. They are large enough to delay projects, raise construction costs, and make an already serious housing shortage even more difficult to solve.

The usual explanation is that America has run out of people willing or able to work in the skilled trades. I became curious about that explanation because the country also has millions of unemployed people.

How can we have a shortage of hundreds of thousands of workers while millions of working-age Americans are unemployed?

Maybe the problem is not simply a shortage of people. Maybe it is a shortage of training, access, and coordination.

The Quote Was Accurate. So Where Did the Profit Go?

 A modular factory can estimate every stud, sheet of drywall, length of wire, and hour of labor required to build a project. It can add overhead, include a reasonable profit, and produce what everyone believes is an accurate quote.

Then the project begins—and the profit starts disappearing.

That does not necessarily mean the estimator made a mistake. The problem is that a factory quote reflects what everyone knows when it is prepared. The project may not enter production for several months, and plenty can change between those two dates.

Transportation costs increase. Permits take longer than expected. The site is not ready. An inspector wants something different. The builder changes a specification. A supplier cannot deliver the material originally quoted.

Individually, these changes may not appear serious. Together, they can turn a profitable project into one the factory is simply trying to finish without losing too much money.

The Five Words You'll Find on the Path to Offsite Startup Success

 Inspiration – Preparation – Perspiration – Dedication – Celebration

I was thinking recently about the words we use to describe starting a business. We talk about vision, innovation, disruption and all the other things that sound impressive in a presentation. But when I tried to reduce the journey to words that actually describe what a startup owner must go through, I came up with five: inspiration, preparation, perspiration, dedication and celebration.

They sound pretty good together. You could put them on the wall of a new factory, print them in an investor presentation or use them as the theme of a grand opening speech. However, the words only mean something if you are willing to do the work between them.

For someone starting an offsite construction business, that work begins long before the first module or panel leaves the building.

What’s on the Other Side of Change?

Fresh Eyes on Modular By Jorie Wisnefski

Now that the cat’s out of the bag, I can talk more about why I’m excited for the Offsite Factory Roundtable that Gary Fleisher and I are putting together.

Gary recently wrote about the challenge of moving innovation from a great idea into an actual working factory. His article made me reflect on my own experiences with innovation—and, more importantly, about what I’ve learned from watching people react to change.

At Urban Machine, I experienced this shift firsthand.

We were working on a robot designed to remove metal fasteners from construction wood waste so that the lumber could be reclaimed and reused rather than ground up and buried in a landfill.

The idea is pretty straightforward.

But then came the questions.

“How do you use the wood with holes in it?”

“Why should we slow down our quick process of just getting rid of old wood?”

And, ultimately, “Is changing the process worth it?”

Australia's Bella Modular Closes Its Doors, Leaving Customers and Deposits in Limbo

Another modular home manufacturer has closed its doors, but the unfinished buildings left behind may be easier to identify than the financial and contractual obligations now to be untangled.

Perth-based Bella Modular has notified customers that significant financial difficulties have made it impossible to complete their projects. The company has vacated its manufacturing premises in Hopeland, on Perth's southern fringe, Western Australia.

Bella Modular told customers that it had arranged for an independent modular builder to take over the management and construction of their homes. However, the notice did not identify the replacement builder, and customers were told they would receive additional information within 14 days.

That announcement may offer some hope, but it leaves several urgent questions unanswered.

Who is the new builder? Has it formally agreed to accept every project? Does it have the factory capacity, workforce and working capital required to complete them? What will happen to the deposits already paid to Bella Modular? Will customers be required to contribute more money before construction can resume?

Until those questions are answered, this is not yet a completed rescue plan. It is a proposed transfer involving customers who have already waited, paid substantial sums and, in some cases, lost confidence in the process.

The Quiet Revolution in Offsite Construction Is Being Built One Panel at a Time

 If you step back from the noise surrounding modular housing, robotics, artificial intelligence and highly automated factories, you may notice something important happening quietly beneath the surface.

The most practical momentum in offsite construction may not be coming from volumetric modules rolling down highways. It may be coming from advanced and emerging panelized systems: wall panels, floor and roof cassettes, structural insulated panels, mass timber assemblies and composite systems that move some of construction’s most labor-intensive and error-prone work into controlled factory environments.

Panelized construction has always been part of the backbone of offsite construction. Roof trusses demonstrated decades ago that a factory-built component could dominate an entire trade when its value was obvious to builders. Floor trusses and cassettes followed, reducing on-site labor while improving speed, safety, and coordination.

Wall panels—open, closed and structural—gained acceptance more gradually. Builders began using them because they offered labor relief without requiring the cultural, logistical and regulatory changes associated with volumetric modular construction.

What is happening now, however, is different.

Advanced panelized systems are no longer being promoted solely as a faster way to frame a building. They are becoming tools to improve performance, predictability, sustainability, resilience, and integration.

They are changing what it means to build offsite, and they may ultimately determine whether industrialized construction moves beyond its current limited share of the overall construction market.

Innovation Is Easy to Promote. The “Why” and “How” Determine Whether It Survives.

Something has been bothering me lately about the offsite construction industry.

We are seeing more innovative ideas reach the market than at almost any other time I can remember. New products, services, software platforms, building systems, automation tools and manufacturing processes seem to appear every week.

Each one arrives with an impressive collection of promises.

The innovation will save the factory money. It will increase production, reduce waste, solve labor problems, attract new customers and improve profitability. Some claim it will even let a factory produce more homes with fewer workers.

Then the marketing machine takes over.

Industry “experts” begin talking about the innovation on LinkedIn and other social media platforms. The founders appear on podcasts and participate in video interviews. They present at conferences and seminars. Professionally designed websites explain what the product does, who should use it, and when companies should begin thinking about adopting it.

Those presentations usually answer many of the who, what, and when questions.

What they often fail to explain are the two questions that matter most: Why should this work in my factory, and how are my people supposed to make it work?