Offsite building was supposed to fix everything. So why are factories struggling?

Max Labarriere, technical manager at offsite manufacturing factory Innofab, is hopeful work will pick up next year. (Image: George Heard)

Cécile Meier

Wed, 28 Aug 2024

The factory is eerily quiet. At full capacity, it would have 18 staff and run 24/7, making walls and roofs and floors and modular parts. It could build 2000 houses a year, using software-driven robots to saw, rout, drill, staple and nail precise panels from a 3D model. Its computer-controlled machines could cut forests of raw timber into optimised blocks to be assembled like Lego, with little to no waste. But on a Wednesday morning in August, only six staff are on the floor at Innofab, an offsite manufacturing (OSM) factor...

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