Solving What 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.

So we can’t just keep asking how to make factories more efficient. We need to look at the efficiency of the entire system. That changes the conversation around technology, too.

An ERP system is only valuable if it helps the right people know what needs to happen next.

Automation isn’t valuable simply because a machine makes it faster. It’s valuable if that speed improves the flow of the entire operation rather than creating a bigger pileup downstream.

The same thinking applies to every part of the process, even the way projects are designed. The constraint may not be where we think it is.

That’s what Gary and I are thinking about as we build the programming for our October educational summit.

I’d like to discuss where modular construction really gets stuck.

I have some ideas. I suspect everyone working in this industry does. But the more I learn about offsite construction, the more I realize that some of the most important challenges may exist in the spaces between the pieces—the handoffs and dependencies that connect one part of the process to another.

Those are the conversations we want to explore in October.

Not just what is going wrong, but why. Not just how one company or innovation can fix its piece of the process, but what happens when we look at the entire system.

I’m still learning this space, and I know there are conversations happening inside factories, design firms, and jobsites.

That’s exactly why I want to build October’s agenda shaped by the people doing the work.

So between now and October, I hope you’ll start noticing.

Notice the problem that keeps showing up. 

The handoff that never quite works. The thing your team has learned to work around. The challenge that seems too big—or too interconnected—for one company to solve.

You don’t have to solve it before you arrive. Just notice it. Bring it to the table.

October’s summit shouldn’t be another conference where we hear about individual innovations, then go back to our businesses to think about our own piece of the puzzle. It should be a place to put the problems on the table, connect the dots, and openly acknowledge what’s incomplete.

Some of the problems facing offsite construction may not belong to any one company.

They belong to the system. And if we want to move offsite construction forward, we may have to solve some of them together.

 

Jorie’s Fresh Eyes

If that sounds like a conversation you want to be part of, reach out to Gary Fleisher directly at modcoach@gmail.com to join us.

Come with questions. Come with frustrations. Come with ideas.

Most importantly, come ready to look beyond your own piece of the system to help everyone figure out how the pieces can work better together.