Industrialised housing –definition and categorization of the concept

A new and developed concept of industrialised housing is emerging in the Swedish building industry today. The general opinion is that industrialised housing contains the answer to many of the problems in the building sector. The paper presents a comprehensive definition of industrialised housing, points at its corner stones and key characteristics and discusses how it relates to the paradigms of lean and agile production. Eight characteristic areas are identified: Planning and control of the processes, Developed technical systems, Off-site manufacturing of building parts, Long-term relations between participants, Supply chain management integrated in the construction process, Customer focus, Use of information and communication technology, Systematic performance measuring and re-use of experiences. A categorization model is developed that allows an assessment of the degrees of implementation and fulfillment for each area. The categorization aims at pointing out the areas of strengths and weaknesses of companies working with industrialised housing. The categorization model is tested on two leading Swedish industrialised housing companies working with different frame systems and different organisational set up