We must look at where people are finding problems and identifying common difficulties, and then seek solutions for how we can address them and apply those lessons in other spheres.
Once the price is agreed, the selected suppliers produce the components to set specifications and arrange delivery..This ‘manufacturing as a service’ could have significant benefits for a Platform approach to construction.
What can we learn?.Xometry uses a widely distributed network of suppliers who can respond to requests which suit their capabilities and capacity.This would be a positive outcome for construction, ensuring those suppliers who were local to a planned project could respond, reducing travel distance and therefore carbon, risk of delivery delays etc..
This distribution helps manufacturers to maximise their utilisation; downtime on equipment and operatives contributes to overhead, which is amortised across orders, raising prices and lowering productivity.Having easy access to long term pipeline (as advocated in the Construction Playbook) will of course help ensure there is less downtime.
But being able to use down time to manufacture ‘short’ orders or contribute to a larger order (the consistent specifications making products from different suppliers fungible) will also help increase utilisation and productivity, reducing prices;.
It creates a more direct link between global organisations such as those listed above, and manufacturers.One challenge relates to the complexity of the construction ecosystem itself, which is made up of multiple different industries, all with different value propositions.
These don’t match up, Marks says, commenting that this is why she went to work at.Ultimately, she realised that she just couldn’t make the level of impact she wanted to by working from the bottom up, within just one small portion of the ecosystem.. Marks says the level of change needed to facilitate a true industry shift to industrialised construction requires a top-down level of influence.
She’s currently writing a book about the topic – ‘The Innovator’s Deception.’ She says she’s starting to see multi-billion dollar companies pushing back.They’re starting to feel dissatisfied with what’s on offer to them with traditional construction and they want something different.. That, says Amy Marks, is how she knows things are going to change..
(Editor: Pro Ring Lights)