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Component Manufacturing dverti$er
Don’t Forget! You Saw it in the
Adverti$er
March 2020 #12248 Page #72
A Case for Innovation in the Building Industry
By Craig Savage
F
or years, I’ve been interested in why the residential building industry has been so slow to innovate. Other industries constantly innovate. The U.S. automobile industry, arguably pushed along by Japan and European car makers, continues to advance its products and production methods. Consumer electronics advance so fast year over year that I’ve almost given up trying to follow the trends. Airplanes? Unrecognizable from their early forms, using materials that didn’t even exist 20 years ago. But housing – not so much. The top 10 home builders sold $74 Billion dollars worth of homes in 2018, the majority of them still stick-built, on site, the same way houses were built when the “innovation” known as western platform framing replaced balloon framing. Sure, most builders now recognize the efficacy of roof trusses, and some are adding basic prefabricated wall panels, but that’s as far as most go when it comes to innovation – if you can even call it that. To be clear, by “innovation,” I’m not talking about 3D printed houses (a sure bet a decade out, in my opinion) or the use of exotic self-replicating materials or AI-driven robots. Rather, I’m talking about companies like yours adding additional value to the parts you are already fabricating in your factories.
Adding Value with Innovation Today, panel manufacturers all over the U.S. efficiently turn out extremely accurate panels and ship them numbered and stacked for frictionless, scheduled installation. And their customers are progressive builders who are learning, or have already mastered, the scheduling and trade skills necessary to weave factory-built panels into a time-saving, cost-effective building process. It seems to me that the “basic” panel fabricators are in a constant race to the bottom, delivering a commodity, dependent on commodity-priced lumber and OSB, and reactive to how far their competition is willing to cut margins. Simply stated, panel manufacturers make money when they add value to commoditypriced studs and OSB – by assembling and delivering panels better, faster, and cheaper than can be done by crews on site. But as I see it, that leaves money on the table. Why not go a step (or steps) further by adding additional value in the factory, and take a slice of that value to the bank – while giving the customer the other slice of value?
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