Custom Manufacturing Design for Modular Housing

Modular Homes: Green Building to Meet the Need for Affordable Housing

We recently visited a fascinating startup company in southern Washington State that intends to solve the housing crisis by reinventing the construction industry. The company recognizes both a growing demand for affordable housing and a growing crisis in the housing industry’s ability to meet that demand. The problem is that affordable housing is thought of as a product created by a series of disconnected participants in the supply chain: investors, land owners, developers, contractors, architects, engineers, material suppliers. . Each of these parties at every stage in the process has its own need to maximize profits and minimize risk. Governments provide policies, codes, and regulations along with financing and subsidies.

The result of this complexity is increasing unmet housing demand, escalating construction costs, higher rents and home prices, nationwide homelessness and an affordable housing crisis. The startup we visited intends to solve this problem, creating prosperity and equity in communities by disintermediating the traditional development process and providing a vertically integrated solution to create housing at scale. Their solution is a fully integrated supply chain, including all of the supply chain functions in a single company to minimize the complexities of development and construction. The product of the company’s factories will be pre-manufactured modules that can be quickly stacked or assembled in any configuration to meet the needs of the customer and the job-site. The result is intended to be high-performing, high-quality, low-cost buildings with a minimal carbon footprint.

We were able to look at the company’s plans and prototypes and immediately suggest specific manufacturing options that could minimize production costs and maximize profitability for the company. For example, the building modules are intended to “snap” together at the construction site, connecting the various systems in the building — electrical, plumbing, data, etc. Our company, ALV, has deep experience over many years in designing custom components with extruded aluminum. We can easily design and manufacture the aluminum frames for the modules so that they snap together quickly and reliably, saving many hours of work. We expect to work closely with the company’s engineers from the very beginning of the design process.

This is a great example of what we mean by “supply chain innovation.”