Feedback in industrialised housing, why does it not happen?

The construction industry is based on craftsmanship and the construction hero is someone who handles every appearing situation with a somewhat good result. Quality work in manufacturing relies on repetitiveness, standardisation and follow-up, whereas construction is about uniqueness, responsiveness to problems and flexibility in solutions. A category of construction companies have met the contradiction between construction and manufacturing - industrialised house builders. This category of companies work with the prefabrication of building parts for later assembly at the building site. The degree of prefabrication ranges from manufacturing open walls and floors up to producing entire volume modules with complete interior cladding. In lean theories as well as quality management, the notion of continuous improvement and experience feedback is strong. Yet, why is this mechanism almost non-existent with traditional construction companies? Industrial house builders benefit more from experience feedback than traditional construction firms, since the repetitiveness is higher. This paper aims to explore why experience feedback, in Sweden, does not function in today's industrialised building process. The manufacturing process of four industrial house builders in Sweden was studied and mapped. The results show that much focus was put on streamlining the production process at the factory, but that experience feedback between departments at the company was small and non-existent from quality audits within the company. A change in company culture and leadership is needed to start addressing this problem.Godkänd; 2008; 20081117 (ysko