Reducing complexity of customized prefabricated buildings through modularisation and it support

Many companies in Sweden using prefabricating strategies are currently meeting the ever increasing customer requirements with ad-hoc solutions that do not fit their production system. This is causing bottlenecks and lower profit margins as a consequence. One solution to the problem is to re-engineer their building systems according to modularization principles used in the manufacturing industries, which have adapted their production to be able to meet mass-customization. This paper describes the first part in study of modularization of building systems and if methods used in themanufacturing industry can be adapted to the building industry. The Swedish construction industries using prefabrication strategies are mainly project oriented, and needs todevelop a more product oriented development process to benefit from the values that modularization can give.It is also obvious that it is impossible to introduce modularization methods used in manufacturing industries ifdesign requirements are incomplete or changing from project to project. It is therefore essential that theproduct owner owns the whole process as well. Varying customers’ demands can to some extent be handledusing modularization principles. However, we don’t believe that one solution fit’s all; therefore it is essential to target a specific segment of the market. The cost for the development of such modularized building systemfor the targeted segment of customer must be evaluated against the possible market share.