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.