The development and use of product platforms in single-family industrialized house building

Single-family industrialized house building is a trade characterized by a complete predefinition of products with off-the-shelf solutions offered to a market niche. Limited customization is included in the offerings in the form of a modular configuration of predefined components. A high level of prefabrication, often including volumetric elements, enables high efficiency in product variant realization processes, specifically, product specification, manufacturing, and on-site assembly. However, as the current markets are dynamic and often volatile, such offerings do not suffice in securing the success of business. Instead, offerings that include flexible product concepts with lower levels of predefinition and the concurrent achievement of high efficiency in processes using volumetric element prefabrication are needed. In this research, realizing this is characterized as the adoption of high-level mass customization. The main value of the presented research for the practice is support for single-family industrialized house building in adopting high-level mass customization. The main enablers for the adoption of both lower and higher levels of mass customization are product platforms. The research on the development and use of product platforms has, however, been conducted mainly in multi-family industrialized house building. The differences in the types of offerings and customers between single-family and multi-family industrialized house building, reveal a research opportunity to study the development and use of product platforms in single-family industrialized house building. More specifically, the knowledge gaps include a lack of understanding regarding: the development and use of product platforms from a business model perspective, challenges for the development and use of product platforms when adopting high-level mass customization and support in addressing the identified challenges. Therefore, the research purpose is to add to the knowledge on the development and use of product platforms and support that enables the adoption of high-level mass customization in single-family industrialized house building. The Design Research Methodology framework was used to plan and design the research. The research was conducted iteratively through four stages named: research clarification, descriptive study I, prescriptive study, and descriptive study II. The results provide an increased understanding regarding the development and use of product platforms in single-family industrialized house building through a coherent description of the product platform alignment phenomenon and the identified challenges when high-level mass customization is adopted. The results also increase knowledge regarding support in the development and use of product platforms that address the identified challenges. This part of the results is twofold. Firstly, an information modelling method is proposed, and it demonstrates how product platform use can be modelled in the design process of single-family industrialized house building. Secondly, the results demonstrate how the design module construct can be modelled using the design assets throughout the design process. To exemplify the design module construct, a configuration of the flexible volumetric elements and the panelized elements they are composed of is proposed. Process efficiency during the predefinition and modify-to-order specification of design modules is addressed. The presented research makes knowledge contributions to the theoretical fields of product platforms, building information management and business models.