Potential Technologies and Concepts for Improving Industrialized Housing Manufacture

Home building has traditionally been a trade of the carpenter and craftsman. Today small site-builders are finding it more difficult to meet the increasing demand for affordable housing. Affordability will likely be a major issue that will have to be addressed in the future. To achieve affordability may require modifying or redesigning traditional building methodologies. Industrial automation might be a feasible alternative for this industry. Industrialized housing is the most promising branch of the industry in terms of automation potential. Through automation, higher product quality, and production rates can be realized without losing the custom-look of a site-built home. This research report presents two alternative approaches to the improvement of industrialized housing manufacture: Automation: reviews commercial systems on the market today and technological innovations under development that could be transferred into the industrialized housing industry. Concurrent Engineering: this approach considers alternative methodologies which would utilize concurrent engineering concepts to develop building blocks out of which houses can be made. This approach is recommended as a future research area