Prefabrication experiments - 463 - Lessons from the mobile home sector

Critiques of the mobile home industry range from suspect construct quality to cookie cutter inferior design and to trailer parks denoting less than ideal living conditions. While these assessments have been debated, the production of these untethered shelters on an assembly line can certainly relate expertise about dwelling affordability. 

 

The self-built inhabitable trailer and the manufactured house, a progression of the mobile home, share the chronicles of building a whole or half of a house on a mobile steel chassis. The chassis, a movable foundation platform onto which the home's structure is attached, also facilitates rolling the structure in the factory from one production station to another. The mobile home differs from modular volumetric building chunks which are usually produced without the steel wheeled base, installed on a permanent foundation, carried on a truck and stacked multiple stories high. Both share the benefits of completing most building tasks in a climate-controlled setting.

 

For a typical onsite built house, labour can represent up to 50% of total costs; factory workers' reduced wages, automated manufacturing, assorted aids such as hoists, jigs, automated machinery and gantry cranes can reduce labour costs by as much as 30%. The repeating patterns of mobile homes also make it possible to make bulk purchases for everything from wall board to kitchen cabinetry and plumbing fixtures. With all these cost rationalizing measures, the mobile home industry still represents a successful segment of home production accounting for roughly 9% of all homes built in the US. 

 

One of the important lessons of the inhabitable trailer is the in-factory optimization integrating experience from home to home reducing task times and waste at every step of the process. When compared to onsite construction, quality control in the factory and inspecting recurring designs and organizations is simpler - fostering clear procedural practises. Founded on the strengths of mass production, most companies offer predetermined designs with some options for customization, however product seriality whether based on linear or cellular manufacturing lines is the formidable lesson that can be learned from mobile homes. 

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