Why it's so hard to mass produce houses in factories

Along with Flying cars Mass produced prefabricated houses are one of those things that always seem to be in the future no matter what year it is.

This great episode from NPR’s Planet Money podcast asks the question: Why don't we build more houses in factories?

So what is the future of housing an industry seeming stuck in time? Personally I’m not sure that mass produced houses are the answer. The problem is that houses are big, so if you make them off-site you need to bring them to site and this is very expensive cancelling out potential savings in production costs. I’ve always known this but what I didn’t know is that from an economic perspective housing is cyclical and in a downturn the overheads and fixed costs of a factory that produces houses make downturns particularly painful putting prefab home companies out of business.

I've always thought that the solution might be not in creating houses in the factory but in speeding up the component prefabrication (Prefab) process, making building components when needed, and using automated site measurement and digital systems for speed and accuracy. The materials, robotics, AI, engineering and big data solutions are now available off the shelf, the only thing missing is creative thinking and systems innovation. So the future is not prefabricated houses but fast prefab of housing components such as laminated panels, lightweight concrete panels, composite panels and small site cranes to install them all.