Ben Hershey Wants the Offsite Factory to Work as Well as the Sales Pitch

Connecting people, production, and information is the real challenge.

Walk into an offsite construction factory, and you can usually find someone who knows why production is behind. Walk into the office, and you may find someone with an entirely different explanation. Sales has another version, purchasing is waiting for answers, and the general manager is trying to determine which problem needs attention before lunch.

Everybody is working. Getting all that work to move in the same direction is where things become interesting.

That is the territory Ben Hershey and 4Ward Solutions Group have chosen to work in. Their business brings together manufacturing advice, design support, workforce resources, automation, factory planning, and software. For an industry where a decision in one department can create three problems in another, that combination deserves a closer look.

A background that started before the consulting business

Hershey is the founder and CEO of 4Ward Solutions Group. His background includes owning and operating manufacturing businesses, and his family’s involvement in the industry helped shape his career. According to the company’s history, he started 4Ward in 2010 after selling his ownership interests in several manufacturing centers. His father, Don Hershey, suggested that he put his experience to work helping other companies.

That progression makes sense. Running a manufacturing business gives a person plenty of opportunities to discover the distance between what should happen and what actually happens. Equipment breaks. Customers change their minds. Good employees leave. A seemingly profitable order can become considerably less attractive once everyone finishes counting what it took to build it.

That experience does not automatically make anyone a good adviser. It does, however, provide a useful starting point when the conversation turns from a presentation to the problems waiting on the factory floor.

The factory’s problems rarely stay in one department

4Ward serves modular, panelized, and structural building-component manufacturers. Its services cover consulting, design, workforce development, robotics and automation, software, and supply-chain support. In its August 2026 announcement of a unified brand identity, the company described a family that includes 4Ward Design, 4Ward Workforce, 4Ward Foundry, 4Ward Factory, and Moducore.

The significance is in how those services might work together. A factory that believes it needs more production workers may first need to address incomplete drawings. A company shopping for automation may discover that inconsistent material delivery is keeping its existing equipment idle. An owner considering expansion may need a clearer understanding of what the current building can produce.

Buying help for each issue separately can leave management responsible for connecting all the recommendations. The design adviser has one plan, the equipment supplier has another, and the software provider wants the company to organize its information before implementation begins. Meanwhile, somebody still has to ship Thursday’s homes.

My reading of 4Ward’s approach is that it aims to help manufacturers deal with those connections. The value would depend on how effectively the team turns its broad capabilities into specific improvements inside each customer’s operation.

Sometimes the answer is better management

Among 4Ward’s listed services are lean manufacturing support, restructuring, operational improvement, and interim management. That gives the company a role in helping existing factories work through problems as well as assisting companies preparing for growth.

This is the less glamorous side of factory improvement, and it is often where the difficult conversations belong. Who has the authority to release a job into production? Who approves a change after materials have been ordered? What happens when sales promises something the production schedule cannot accommodate?

A factory can spend a great deal of money compensating for unclear answers. More overtime, more inventory, and another supervisor may keep things moving, but management should understand what created the need.

An outside team can help when it examines habits that have become too familiar to question. The real test comes when those conversations lead to clearer responsibilities and a production process employees can follow without constantly improvising.

Try the layout before moving the machinery

One of 4Ward’s more tangible offerings is its factory modeling and simulation service. Through 4Ward Factory, the company offers 3D models and simulations for structural-component and volumetric modular manufacturers. Applications include testing layouts, equipment arrangements, and staffing changes, as well as planning new facilities or modifying existing ones. Depending on the scope, a simulation can incorporate time studies.

Anyone who has moved equipment around a working factory can appreciate the appeal. A layout can look perfectly reasonable on a drawing while leaving unanswered questions about material movement, access, storage, and what happens when one operation falls behind.

Simulation lets you examine those questions before committing to physical changes. Its usefulness still depends on the assumptions going into it. A model built around ideal staffing, uninterrupted production, and perfect material availability needs to be challenged before anyone treats it as a dependable forecast.

I would want to see what happens on an ordinary difficult Tuesday. That is when a proposed layout starts earning my confidence.

Where Moducore enters the picture

Moducore is the software business within the 4Ward group. In April 2021, 4Ward acquired the platform from MPE Engineering, adding a system intended to help offsite manufacturers manage information from preconstruction through project closeout.

Its current website describes a cloud-based platform covering customer relationships, design collaboration, production scheduling, work orders, purchasing, inventory, and project coordination. It also offers labor and material tracking by individual, workstation, department, and module, along with tools for quality issues, change orders, and reporting.

That is a substantial range of functions, but the factory owner’s question should be straightforward: Will this help my people make better decisions while there is still time to do something?

Consider a job taking more labor than expected. Knowing that after shipment may help explain a disappointing margin. Seeing the problem while the job is moving through production creates an opportunity to investigate. Perhaps a detail was underestimated, material arrived incorrectly, or a workstation is repeatedly correcting work from an earlier operation.

The information becomes useful when somebody can act on it. Otherwise, the company has found a more sophisticated way to document its frustrations.

Getting people to use the system matters

Moducore lists onboarding, data migration, integrations, and ongoing support among its services. Those are meaningful parts of the offering because introducing software changes how people record, share, and use information.

A production supervisor needs a system that fits the working day. Purchasing needs information it can trust. Management needs consistent reporting, and employees need to understand why entering accurate information is worth their time.

That requires decisions inside the factory. Who owns the data? Who keeps it current? What happens when the new system and somebody’s old spreadsheet disagree? Those questions deserve attention before the company congratulates itself on becoming digital.

The potential advantage of combining manufacturing support with software is that the operational conversations and the technology decisions can inform each other. Whether that potential becomes a measurable benefit depends on each customer's starting conditions and results.

Gary’s Observation

Gary Fleisher, modcoach@gmail.com

What interests me about Ben Hershey’s approach is the recognition that improving a factory involves several connected responsibilities. People, drawings, materials, equipment, schedules, and management decisions must all work together. Giving one department a better tool can help, but the benefit depends on what happens before and after that department does its work.

4Ward and Moducore offer a broad set of services aimed at that challenge. I would judge their value the same way I would judge any company offering to improve an offsite operation: establish the problem, agree on what improvement should look like, and measure what changes.

Can the factory make promises it can keep? Can supervisors see trouble earlier? Can employees spend more of their day doing useful work? Does management understand where the money is going?

Those answers tell me much more than the number of features in a software demonstration or the size of a consulting proposal. They also get us closer to the question every factory owner eventually has to answer: Is this business becoming better to operate, or simply more expensive to keep running?

The Modular Factory Building for the Day Everything Else Stops Working

Most modular factories build homes, classrooms, apartments, hotels or workforce housing. Their customers are usually thinking about schedules, mortgage payments, operating costs, and how soon they can move in.

A single factory serves customers asking a very different question: What happens when the power goes out, communications fail, civil order breaks down, or the outside air is no longer safe to breathe?

Atlas Survival Shelters manufacture prefabricated steel shelters designed for customers commonly described as preppers. Their products may be buried underground, protected by heavy steel doors and equipped with specialized air-filtration systems, but their manufacturing model is surprisingly familiar.

Steel sections are cut and welded inside a controlled factory. They install electrical, plumbing, and ventilation systems before shipment. Customers select interior packages, completed units are transported by truck, and installation crews prepare the site and place the structure.

Strip away the survival branding, and these companies are specialized offsite manufacturers. Their customers are purchasing factory-built living spaces—just with far more unusual performance requirements.

Atlas Survival Shelters Turns Fear Into a Manufactured Product

120 Modules in a Landfill—And Everyone Should Be Pissed Off

 

With over 1,000 modules already on a major project, 120 are now headed to the landfill after severe water damage.

The project took place in Cairns, Queensland, Australia, at a massive social housing development in the suburb of Woree. It was intended to deliver hundreds of affordable housing units using modular construction, with more than 1,000 factory-built modules contributing to roughly 490 homes in what was described as one of the region's largest projects of its kind.

The demolition stemmed from severe weather exposure during construction. Heavy rain hit modules that were not fully sealed or protected, allowing water to penetrate interiors, damage materials, and cause mold contamination. The deterioration was so severe that many units were deemed beyond repair, forcing demolition and disposal rather than remediation. 

Not repaired. Not reworked. Just gone.

And while there may be more to the story, I want to know how this could have been avoided. I'm sure you want to know also!

Tossing the Modular Rulebook

Fresh Eyes on Modular by Jorie Wisnefski 

Last week’s Fresh Eyes article started when I saw Chad Crosby’s LinkedIn post. He shared about transporting exceptionally large modular buildings over considerable distances. It’s not a routine haul, and the challenges involved led me down a rabbit hole of exploring the realities of moving modular construction.

I tagged Chad in my post and asked him a question. He responded immediately that he was happy to chat.

Huge win for me!

Chad Crosby

Our conversation began with Halo Halo, Chad’s logistics business, and turned into a broader discussion about the factories he visits and the companies he’s encountered that are doing things differently.

The theme that kept resurfacing was a willingness to throw out the rulebook.

Lustron’s 1948, $37.5 Million Housing Dream—and the Lesson Factories Still Haven’t Learned

"A housing shortage. A factory promising to build homes like automobiles. Government money intended to help a bold idea reach production. Thousands of potential customers waiting for something better."

If that sounds like a pitch you heard last week, pull up a chair. In 1948, Lustron was already trying to make it happen. Two years later, its housing revolution was headed through foreclosure and bankruptcy. The uncomfortable part is how familiar that story still sounds.

Lustron deserves more than a spot on a list of failed housing experiments. It built real homes, some of which have outlasted generations of supposedly more sophisticated business plans. Its failure offers a lesson every factory owner, investor, and public official should understand: a durable house and a durable business require different kinds of engineering.

A Steel House for Postwar America

Time to Get Off Your Ass and Learn What Younger Builders Actually Want

 

Here’s a wake-up call: Boomers and older Millennials running offsite factories and B2B companies are dangerously out of touch with what the next generation of builders and developers actually wants. You can have a 150,000-square-foot factory, a million-dollar robot, and a shiny new website, but if you can’t connect with the people who will be signing purchase orders ten years from now — you’re already falling behind.

The uncomfortable truth? They don’t think the way you do. They don’t buy the way you do. And they sure as hell don’t have the patience to sit through your hour-long sales pitch that hasn’t changed since 2005.

They Don’t Want to Hear About Your Factory. They Want to See What It Can Do for Them.

Panelization Is Having a Moment. Now It Has to Deliver.

Better buildings, fewer jobsite headaches, and a serious rethink of how we put everything together.

Construction has a strange relationship with inconvenience. We complain about missing workers, wasted materials, weather delays, and schedules that read like a creative writing assignment. Then we start the next project using almost exactly the same process.

At some point, “that’s how we’ve always done it” becomes an expensive subscription nobody remembers signing up for.

That is why panelization deserves a serious conversation. Moving portions of wall, floor, and roof construction into a controlled manufacturing environment creates opportunities to make building more predictable. Components can arrive measured, assembled, labeled, and ready for a planned installation sequence. Depending on the system, insulation and other envelope components can come with them.

The appeal is easy to understand. The execution takes more thought. People like Charles Leahy of Eco-Panels and Gregory J. Leja of Gorilla Composites are contributing different—and useful—ideas about how much a panel can actually accomplish.

First, Let’s Get the Vocabulary Straight

Four Unconventional Reasons to Start a Modular Home Factory

Whenever someone tells me they want to open a modular home factory, I can usually guess what’s next. Construction takes too long. Skilled labor is hard to find. Building indoors makes sense.

Those are all reasonable starting points. But they don’t tell me why a builder or developer will buy from this particular factory, how often they’ll order, or whether the factory can make money filling those orders.

A housing shortage is not a purchase order. Neither is an enthusiastic meeting with a mayor, a developer, or an investor who thinks modular construction is overdue for its big moment.

What interests me is the founder who approaches the business from a different direction. Someone who has identified a specific problem, figured out who will pay to solve it, and designed a factory around that relationship.

Here are four unconventional reasons to open a modular home factory that deserve a closer look.

Are We Thinking Inside the Wrong Box?

Fresh Eyes on Modular By Jorie Wisnefski

This week, Chad Crosby shared a post on LinkedIn showing a home built by Northstar Systembuilt making its way from the factory in South Dakota to its destination in Colorado. It made me pause.

I was trying to decide if this was unusual of modular construction or if the industry is doing things like this more often.

Chad’s post sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole, and I love that about having Fresh Eyes on an industry. One question leads to another, and before long, I’m understanding things a little differently.

Modular construction offers a different way to build. Instead of framing a house stick by stick on a jobsite, much of the work can happen in a controlled factory.

It’s a different way to think about building, but I wonder if we judge modular by how well it fits the conventional way of doing things, rather than considering what might be possible if we approached a project differently.

As I started investigating, I found examples of architects designing distinctive custom homes around modular construction, builders using it on challenging mountain sites, and designers combining modules in ways that create something more than a stack of standardized boxes.

I’m not suggesting every project should be modular, or that there aren’t constraints involving transportation, cost, and installation. There are.

I’m just curious about where those constraints end and our assumptions begin.

Fresh Eyes on Modular

Jorie Wisnefski

Chad, I’d love to hear your perspective. Was the Northstar shipment an unusual undertaking, or is it representative of what modular builders can do today? What about this project might surprise someone who is learning about modular construction and transportation?

And for those designing, manufacturing, or transporting modular buildings, what are you doing differently that the rest of us might not know about?

I’m still learning, and I know a lot is happening in this industry that I haven't seen yet. That's why I follow these questions wherever they lead.

That’s the point of Fresh Eyes. I notice something, get curious, and follow the thread to see what I learn.

Modular doesn’t have to compete with the conventional way of building.

But perhaps we’ve been thinking about the possibilities inside the wrong box all along.

Your Company Has a Story. Let’s Get It in Front of the Industry.

I’ve spent enough years around the offsite construction industry to know that some very good companies are also very good at keeping themselves a secret. They build quality homes, develop useful products, and solve problems that other factories are still wrestling with. Then they wonder why more people haven’t heard of them.

Usually, it isn’t because they have nothing to say. They’re simply too busy running the business to spend much time telling their story. That’s why I put together an advertising package on Offsite Straight Talk for $799 a year, with two bonuses that give companies more than just an ad.

Visibility, Plus Something Useful

The package includes an ad featured more than 60,000 times a month on Offsite Straight Talk. That’s repeated exposure throughout the year, giving readers more chances to notice your name and become familiar with what you offer.

But getting someone’s attention is only part of the job. What happens when they click through to your website? Can they quickly understand what you do, who you serve, and how to take the next step?

That’s where the first free bonus comes in: a full Offsite Factory Website Efficiency Index report. It’s a chance to see whether your website helps tell your story or leaves visitors with questions you should already be answering.

The second free bonus is an Offsite Straight Talk article about your product or factory. An ad introduces your name. An article gives us room to explain what you do and why someone in this industry should pay attention.

Gary’s Observation

Gary Fleisher, modcoach@gmail.com

I’m not going to tell you that buying an ad will suddenly fill your production schedule. Anyone who's spent time in this business knows earning a customer takes more than one visit.

What I am offering is a year of visibility, a useful look at your website, and an article that helps introduce your company—all for $799. If you’ve been meaning to do a little more marketing but keep putting it behind everything else on your desk, this is a practical place to start.

Contact me to put your company in the Offsite Straight Talk spotlight.

The Break Room Knows Before Management Does

Employees often see trouble coming. The challenge is making it comfortable for them to tell you before it arrives.

Somewhere in your factory, three employees are eating lunch and discussing why the new production procedure won’t work. One knows the material cart cannot fit where the drawing says it belongs. Another knows the instructions leave out a step. The third tried mentioning both problems last Tuesday, but nobody followed up.

Meanwhile, management is preparing an announcement about the successful rollout. Welcome to the break room, where the coffee may be questionable, but the information can be surprisingly good.

I’ve always believed the people doing the work see things that never quite make it into a production report. They know which tool needs a little persuasion, which instructions require an interpreter, and which dependable employee has started talking about “trying something different.” The challenge is learning what they know without making lunch feel like an undercover investigation.

The Information Is Already There

In an offsite factory, employees experience the difference between how work is planned and how it actually happens. A supervisor sees a completed wall panel. The person building it knows the nail gun jammed six times, the drawing conflicted with yesterday’s revision, and someone borrowed the only functioning tape measure again.

Who Checks on the Person Everyone Else Depends On?

Every factory has someone people turn to when things get difficult. It might be the owner, the general manager, or the operations executive who seems to carry the production schedule around in their head. When a supplier misses a delivery, a customer threatens to cancel, or payroll arrives before a payment does, everyone knows whose door to knock on.

We expect that person to have an answer, or at least enough confidence to make us believe an answer is coming. But I wonder how often anyone stops at that same door without a problem to unload and asks, “How are you doing with all of this?”

Then stays long enough to hear the answer.

Building from the Inside Out

Fresh Eyes on Modular By Jorie Wisnefski 

When Candice Delamarre moved from France to attend Stanford for graduate school, she spent her days studying Sustainable Design and Construction inside the university’s high performance Y2E2 building, a benchmark of energy efficiency and smart solar shading. Her off campus rental apartment offered a sharp contrast though. Its drafty, single-pane windows made her bedroom walls frosty at night. 

The paradox caught her attention. In the heart of the Bay Area, the knowledge to build high performing environments clearly existed, but everyday housing didn’t always benefit from it.

Candice became fascinated by the puzzle and wondered what invisible constraints were keeping attainable housing so difficult to modernize. 

Industry veterans have learned the rules, understand the constraints, and have found ways to work around the problems. Workarounds become so familiar we don’t question them. 

Sometimes it takes someone with Fresh Eyes to ask why. 

Making a change means understanding why things work the way they do and listening to the people doing the work. It’s important to figure out where a different approach might help. 

Candice and her cofounder, Armelle Coutant, didn't set out to solve every problem in housing. With Kit Switch, they focus specifically on interiors—chipping away at one problem. 

Kit Switch delivers ready-to-install kitchen, bath, and storage systems for multifamily housing. The idea is to make these parts of a home easier to manufacture, coordinate, and install for new construction, renovations, or adaptive reuse. 

That focus was deliberate. 

Candice recognized that some people might see interiors as too small a piece of the construction process to make a meaningful difference, but she and Armelle saw opportunity in concentrating on one part of the problem and doing it differently. 

It's a practical lesson for anyone looking to change an established industry. You don't need to reinvent the entire process. You can make a meaningful difference by rethinking one piece and how it works better alongside everything else. 

Prefabrication offered one solution. By manufacturing components before they reach the jobsite, teams can make installation more predictable. That doesn't eliminate every construction challenge, but it creates an opportunity to work differently. 

And different doesn’t mean complicated. 

Kit Switch’s approach is proven by the people putting it into practice on-site. They work closely with manufacturing partners to push beyond traditional limits, while designing installation workflows alongside tradespeople to make assembly intuitive, safe, and significantly faster. Several general contractors actively build with Kit Switch because the systems remove friction at the site.   

That’s huge. A new idea only goes so far on paper. When the people responsible for making it work see value and want to keep working with you, the idea has real potential. 

Anyone in construction knows it’s a relationship industry. If a different approach creates more headaches, it’s unsustainable. 

In an industry as complex as construction, the hardest part of early growth is resisting scope creep. Candice and Armelle realized that staying true to their vision meant learning to say no—turning down projects that offered quick revenue to protect their focus on scalable and mission driven industry partnerships.  

There's no shortage of reasons why something might not work. Experience helps people recognize legitimate constraints, and it makes familiar limitations harder to question. 

Having Fresh Eyes doesn’t guarantee better answers, but they can open doors to opportunities others have stopped searching for. 

Kit Switch delivered interiors for more than 70 housing units this year and signed $2.4M in supply agreements since the completion of these deliveries. Those numbers show clear traction, with developers, contractors, and architects adopting their prefabricated interior systems from design through delivery. 

The company still has plenty to learn, as every growing business does, but it’s moved beyond the concept stage. 

I love when someone understands a system well enough to see where it falls short, but is still willing to ask, “Why not do it another way?” Candice didn't come into construction thinking she knew better than everyone else. She listened, found a problem worth solving, and worked with the people in the field to come up with a solution they could actually use. 

The answer isn't obvious to everyone. Folks loved candlelight until Edison thought of a better way, but someone willing to flip the switch can make all the difference. 

A fresh set of eyes can help us see a better way forward. 

 

Jorie'sSummary: 

Jorie Wisnefski, joriefaith@hotmail.com

Solving a big problem takes Fresh Eyes and a willingness to question how things have always been done. Candice Delamarre and her cofounder are rethinking how interiors are designed and built in order to build more housing and preserve affordability. 

Kit Switch is looking for project and capital partners for their current fundraise and next stage of growth. Candice welcomes conversations and partnership inquiries. 

Bitchin’ Doesn’t Fix a Factory. Neither Does Ignoring the Problem.

 

Walk through an offsite construction factory, and you will hear complaints. Somebody is waiting for material. Someone else has drawings that don’t match what's on the production line. A supervisor wonders who approved a change, while the person doing the work wonders why nobody told the supervisor.

If you have spent enough time around factories, you know that complaining is practically an unofficial department. It doesn’t have a budget, although it can certainly help explain where some of the money went.

My first reaction when somebody starts bitchin’ is to wonder whether they want to solve something or simply find an audience. But making that judgment too quickly is dangerous. The loudest person might be pointing to a problem management should have addressed three weeks ago.

Here is the approach I believe makes sense: “Bitchin’ doesn’t fix a factory. But neither does ignoring the person who spotted the problem. Tell me what’s wrong, bring an idea if you have one, and let’s figure out what we can do about it.”

That puts responsibility on both sides. Employees need to explain what they are seeing. Management needs to do something useful with the information.

We’re Teaching Machines to Think. Who’s Teaching Our People?

Somewhere right now, a company is explaining how artificial intelligence will transform the offsite construction industry. It will help schedule production, track materials, prepare estimates, answer customer questions, and perhaps eventually explain why the forklift is never where anyone left it.

Meanwhile, a new employee on a factory floor is trying to figure out which drawing to use. The one on the table looks different from the one attached to the wall, and the person who knows the answer is at lunch. He spent yesterday following someone around and was told this morning he should be getting the hang of it.

I’m interested in what AI can do for our industry. There are useful possibilities, and some deserve serious attention. But I keep coming back to a fairly ordinary question: Why do we spend so much time discussing how to make machines smarter and so little time discussing how to help people get better at their jobs?

Before You Build an ADU for Mom and Dad, Have the Conversation Nobody Puts in the Brochure

I’ve been around housing long enough to know that people enjoy talking about what they’re going to build. Show them a floor plan, an attractive kitchen, and a little porch, and the conversation practically starts itself. Before long, someone is choosing cabinets while someone else decides where the flower boxes should go.

But if you ask whether Dad expects to eat dinner at the main house every evening, everyone goes quiet. That conversation rarely makes it into the brochure, though it may matter more to the project's success than the cabinets ever will.

An accessory dwelling unit, usually called an ADU, is a separate living space on the same property as the main home. For families considering one for aging parents, the appeal is easy to understand. Mom and Dad can have their own home, their children can be nearby, and everyone can spend less time worrying about the distance between them.

I can see a lot of good in that arrangement. However, before anyone signs a construction contract, I think the family needs to sit around a table without a salesperson, a floor plan, or a cabinet sample and talk about what they are actually proposing. 

AI Can Help You Do More. Who Decides What Comes First?

Why prioritizing deserves more attention from offsite construction owners as artificial intelligence becomes part of everyday business.

I’ve been wondering whether one of the most basic responsibilities of owning an offsite construction business gets lost in the excitement around artificial intelligence. We hear about creating marketing campaigns in minutes, preparing proposals faster, analyzing information, and generating enough ideas to keep an entire management team occupied until retirement. We hear less about deciding which of those things actually deserves to be done first.

That responsibility used to be called setting priorities. It still is, although it doesn’t come with a software subscription or a particularly impressive demonstration. And as AI makes it easier to start more things, I believe deciding what matters most is becoming an even more important part of the owner’s job.

There is nothing wrong with using AI to accomplish more. The trouble begins when accomplishing more becomes the objective without much discussion about what all that additional activity is supposed to accomplish for the business.

Who’s Building Your “Good Idea”?

Fresh Eyes on Modular By Jorie Wisnefski

A great idea for a development is only the beginning.

A developer finds a property and starts imagining what it could become. Maybe it’s an apartment building, a hotel, or a new housing community. Modular construction seems like a promising way to bring that vision to life.

But I’m learning that choosing the right modular factory can take months of research, redesigns, and back-and-forth between developers and manufacturers.

By then, a promising idea may become much more complicated and expensive.

Max Quinn, Co-Founder & CEO @GroundUp

Max Quinn saw this challenge firsthand while working in modular real estate development. In his experience, developers came to the table with big ideas, but they didn’t always have the information needed to understand what was feasible before moving forward.

They would start by finding a property and envisioning its potential, but they didn’t always understand how that vision aligned with a modular factory’s capabilities.

Investing in a Factory Makes More Sense When You Bring the Projects With You

 

Propertize Ventures’ investment in Shell Pros raises an important question for offsite construction: What if the investor can bring both capital and customers?

Have you ever wondered why some investors become fascinated with the machinery inside an offsite factory before spending much time asking what will keep it running? The equipment is impressive, the production possibilities are exciting, and the housing shortage makes the opportunity sound almost irresistible. Somewhere in that enthusiasm, however, somebody needs to explain where the actual orders will come from.

A factory needs work that is ready to build, customers who can pay, and enough continuity to keep employees productive. Those requirements don’t photograph quite as well as a new automated production line, but they deserve a prominent place in the investment discussion.

That is why the recently reported investment by Propertize Ventures in Shell Pros caught my attention. The link between development activity and manufacturing deserves closer scrutiny.

Your Factory Cannot Manufacture Its Way Around an Unfunded Project

I’ve often wondered how many modular factory business plans begin with a description of America’s housing shortage. Near the front, usually before we get to payroll, an impressive explanation shows how many homes the country needs and how much faster a factory could build them. By the time you finish reading it, you might wonder why there isn’t a line of developers outside the factory door.

Then you talk to the person responsible for filling the production schedule. The developer is still working with the bank, another project is waiting for permits, and the customer who wanted forty homes has decided to start with four. Unfortunately, the electric company has shown very little interest in accepting national housing statistics as payment.

That is where the difference between needing housing and ordering housing becomes painfully clear. A factory can have the right product, capable employees and an efficient production line while the projects it expected to build remain financially unable to proceed.