Construction is a trade where the dominating production strategy is engineer-to-order. House-builders can pre-engineer their design to different degrees, resulting in variations of the engineer-to-order strategy: design-to-order, adapt-to-order, and engineer-to-stock. This variation causes different settings for the use of platforms in house-building. The aim of this research is to diversify the engineer-to-order production strategy and its consequences for platform organization by studying its use in house-building. The multiple case study on four engineering/contractor firms reports the core capabilities for engineer-to-order firms: procurement and tendering, market knowledge, engineering, multi-skilled manufacturing, and coordination of sales and manufacturing. Design-to-order, adapt-to-order and engineer-to stock were shown to be production strategies in use in house-building. In design-to-order platforms parts of the platform are undefined while engineer-to-stock platforms are fully predefined. Coordination between market and manufacturing is a crucial capability when engaging in platform organization. When an engineering firm and a contractor collaborate to fulfil client needs, the coordination capability between market and manufacturing was shown to be low. The case study shows that specialized contractors who integrate the supply chain towards a specific market segment benefit fully from the platform concept, while contractors with a wider scope could focus on standardization of processes rather than products.
The construction industry is based on craftsmanship. Quality control and assurance procedures applied in manufacturing cannot usually be readily applied in construction, where there are higher degrees of uniqueness in each project. One category of companies, industrialized housebuilders, is attempting to bridge some of the gaps between construction and manufacturing. These companies prefabricate building modules for later assembly at the building site. Since they are wholly responsible for large parts of the building process, these companies have greater opportunities to control and improve quality in a more consistent way than ordinary construction companies. Thus, it could be hypothesized that the frequency and severity of defects should be lower in industrialized housing than in ordinary construction. The aim of the study presented here is to examine this hypothesis by measuring and characterizing defects in industrialized housing. The design and manufacturing processes at two Swedish timber module prefabrication firms has been analysed through interviews, site visits and document reviews. Quality audits from three phases of the building process were compiled, analysed and categorized to provide statistical measures of defects in industrialized housing. The results show that the case study companies are better in terms of product quality than conventional housing.Building defects, offsite production, quality management, industrialized housing, modular construction,
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