Questioning Efficiencies

By: Jorie Wisnefski

One of the things I’m learning from Gary Fleisher is to stop looking at the obvious problem and start asking a different question.

Gary recently wrote about why promising innovations often don’t make it to the factory floor. His point was that the industry doesn't need to be pitched more products. It needs more education which offers more opportunities for the people who run factories and production lines to understand the problems and determine whether a solution can really work in their world.

That article sent me down a rabbit hole.

I started watching factory tour videos.

I wanted to see what these factories do to be more efficient, and I kept seeing the same thing.

Efficiency is everywhere.

Most of the factories have more than 30 production stations. They demonstrate how materials are organized, how workers move through a consistent process, and how each stage of construction happens in a controlled environment.

And the advantages of building indoors are certainly compelling. 

Weather won’t stop indoor production. Living in Chicago, I understand those benefits quite well.

Workers aren't spending time loading and unloading tools or driving from jobsite to jobsite. They show up to the same place every day, and the tools and equipment they need are already there.

Materials are staged. Tasks are repeated. Processes are standardized. The factory can control variables that are incredibly difficult to control on a traditional construction site.

There is a tremendous amount of thought going into how efficiently homes can be built.

Then the home is ready to move, and that's typically where these videos end.

I kept seeing modules being prepared for transportation. I saw completed units sitting outside factories. I saw plenty of discussion about “preparing the module for the road” and “preparing the foundation” for its arrival.

But I didn't see videos on the efficiency of moving the finished module to its final home.

That made me wonder: is the focus solely on making the factory more efficient without including the efficiency of getting the home or building to the foundation?

It feels like making a beautiful dinner without eating it. It’s really pretty to look at, but the job isn’t finished. 

To be clear, I'm not saying I’ve unearthed a transportation crisis.

I don't know that yet.

With completed modules stacked up outside a factory, it could mean there’s a transportation bottleneck. Or it could simply be part of a carefully planned staging process with reasons I don’t understand.

That's why I'm asking the question, not making an accusation.

The factory is only one part of the system.

They can build a home faster, but somebody still has to move it.

There are trucks, routes, permits, escorts, weather, traffic, cranes, installation crews, and site schedules. The factory controls what happens inside its walls. It has considerably less control once that home enters the transportation system.

And if we're serious about offsite construction helping address the housing shortage and affordability, I think the whole system needs to be addressed.

I'm still trying to understand the bottleneck. What happens if a factory becomes significantly more efficient at producing modules, but transportation capacity doesn't increase at the same pace?

Does production have to slow down? Does the factory need more storage space? Doesn’t this affect scheduling and the production line?

Or have manufacturers already figured this out, and I just don't understand yet?

I'm grateful to be learning from Gary. He's teaching me to look beyond the obvious answers to ask questions I don't know enough to answer.

People are smart, and factories are innovative, but the housing problem is bigger than any one factory or technology.

If offsite construction is going to help us build more affordable housing quickly, we have to keep looking for the places where the system slows down.

Maybe it's production, labor, materials, transportation, and installation all interacting with each other.

And if the people experiencing those challenges aren't talking to one another, it’s tough to find answers.

That's part of what Gary and I are trying to create with the upcoming educational summit. It’s not another conference where we put innovative products in front of an audience.

It's about bringing people together who understand different pieces of offsite construction and giving them an opportunity to talk about the problems they're experiencing.

To ask the uncomfortable questions. To share what has worked. To admit what hasn't. To challenge assumptions. And to look at an old problem from a completely different angle.

Solving the housing crisis isn't going to happen because someone invents one amazing product. It will happen when we start figuring out how all the pieces can work better together.

I'm going to keep watching the factory videos and asking questions because after seeing all those carefully designed production stations, I still don’t understand why the modules sit outside the factory. 

If someone in the industry already has the answer to making the journey to the foundation just as efficient as the journey through the factory, I want to hear it.

And if they don't, that's the kind of question we should be discussing together.

The home isn't finished when it leaves the factory. It still has to make it home.

Fresh Eyes on Offsite Construction

Questioning Efficiency explores a simple question: if modular factories have become highly efficient at building homes, what happens to that efficiency once the home leaves the factory? 

Jorie Wisnefski’s article for the series, Fresh Eyes on Offsite Construction, looks at transportation, staging, and installation as potentially overlooked parts of the offsite construction system. It also argues that solving housing challenges requires examining how all those pieces work together, not just optimizing the factory.

Where Did Modular’s 20% Savings Go?

Twenty years ago, the modular housing industry walked around with quiet confidence. Sales representatives stood at home shows, builder meetings, and industry events and proudly explained that modular construction could deliver a home for as much as 20% less than conventional site-built construction.

At the time, many of them were right.

Factories were relatively lean, transportation was manageable, building codes were less complicated, overhead was lower, and most modular buyers were satisfied with homes that did not test the limits of architectural design or transportation logistics. Factories could build similar floor plans repeatedly, purchase materials in volume, and move modules through production without stopping for constant engineering revisions.

Today, that story has changed.

In many markets, modular construction comes in at approximately the same price as site-built construction. In some cases, it costs more. Developers, investors, builders, and prospective homeowners are now asking an obvious question: What happened to modular’s promised 20% savings?

Having watched this industry grow, stall, innovate, reinvent itself, and occasionally break its own heart, I believe the answer is relatively simple.

The world changed, and modular did not change fast enough.

The reasons behind the disappearance of that cost advantage, however, reveal something important about where modular construction is today and where it needs to go next.

Changing the Code Is the Easy Part. Changing the Factory Is Not.

After writing two articles about how the Road to Housing legislation could open new opportunities for modular factories to build homes under the HUD Code, I decided to send them to several people whose opinions I trust. I wasn’t looking for compliments or confirmation that I had everything figured out. I wanted the kind of honest response that might expose what I had overlooked.

One of those responses came from Bob Bender, an experienced advisor to both the modular and manufactured housing industries. Bob agreed that the articles raised important observations, but he also reminded me that changing federal rules and changing the realities inside a factory are two very different things.

The legislation may open a door, but Bob’s response made one thing very clear: a modular factory cannot simply put a HUD label on one of its existing homes and declare itself ready to compete in manufactured housing.

The Fires We Remember

by Jorie Wisnefski

The current wildfires in Washington have made me reflect on old fears. 

As a little girl, I went through a phase where I wouldn't sleep over at friends' houses because I was convinced there would be a fire and I wouldn't be able to get back to my family. I understood that fire is a living, breathing beast, and it’s impossible to ignore. It still fascinates me.

As I thought about this week's Fresh Eyes article, I couldn't help but wonder about fire safety in the modular world.

As someone who has spent much of the last decade immersed in the wood industry, fire is never far from the conversation. Whether it's wildfires, lumbermills, mass timber, or new fire resistant technologies, the innovation question keeps resurfacing, How do we build safer?

Canada’s Wildfires May Be the Next Lumber Problem Offsite Factories Cannot Ignore

For years, lumber pricing has been one of those things that factory owners learned to live with. It went up, it came down, somebody blamed housing starts, somebody else blamed the weather, and the purchasing department spent a few more hours on the phone trying to get enough material to keep the line moving.

But Canada’s wildfires are beginning to look like something more than another summer headline with pictures of orange skies and firefighters standing in front of walls of flame.

The question every factory owner, builder, and developer should be asking is not whether the fires will cause a lumber shortage tomorrow morning. The bigger question is whether the wood supply system we have all depended on is becoming less dependable for the next year and a half.

I think the answer is yes.

The First Day of a Startup Should Not Begin With Designing a Logo

Every new business begins with a moment when someone says, “Let’s do this.”

For an offsite construction startup, that moment can be exciting. A new factory, an innovative product, a better way to build homes, or a service the industry needs can suddenly feel possible. Phones begin ringing. Someone starts looking at potential buildings. Another person begins working on the company name, the logo, and the first PowerPoint presentation for investors.

There is nothing wrong with any of that. But the first day a startup decides it is serious should begin with a few much more important questions. The answers will not guarantee success, but they can give the venture a far better chance of actually opening its doors and surviving long enough to matter.

What the Industry Told Me After Looking "Beneath the Floor"

When I wrote recently about the structural shift coming to factory-built housing, I expected some discussion about steel versus wood, permanent chassis versus no permanent chassis, and whether a stronger rim system could reduce foundation supports.

Those conversations happened.

But the comments took the discussion somewhere more important. They reminded me that the future of offsite housing is not really about replacing one material with another. It is about whether we are finally willing to design the entire home as one connected system instead of a collection of separate decisions made by separate people.

The floor system, the transportation method, the carrier, the foundation, the installation crew, the engineer, the builder, and even the homeowner’s impression of the home are all tied together. For too long, we have treated them as though they were not.

That may be the real structural weakness underneath factory-built housing.

Is Your Factory Healthy Enough to Implement Innovation?

I have watched manufacturing companies, including offsite construction factories, spend years talking about the next big thing. It may be a new production system, advanced machinery, robotics, software, a different framing method, a new transportation system, or an entirely new product line.

The conversations usually begin with optimism. Owners see a way to build faster, reduce labor, improve quality, open a new market, or get ahead of competitors who seem content to keep doing things the same old way.

Then the investment is approved. The equipment arrives. Consultants come in. Employees are told change is coming. A few months later, the excitement has been replaced by missed production dates, frustrated employees, rising rework, unhappy customers, and a bank account that seems to be shrinking faster than anyone expected.

Eventually, people begin saying the same thing: “That new system is what caused the company to fail.”

I do not believe that is usually true. More often, the new system simply exposed weaknesses that had been hiding inside the factory for years.