Modular Approaches in Dutch House Building: An Exploratory Survey

Abstract

In many European countries, changing housing policies are now offering clients more influence over the final building. This means that construction firms need to adopt concepts that have a greater customer focus. The electronics, software and automobile industries, and others, have dealt successfully with the trade-off problem that exists between, on the one hand, offering customer variety and, on the other, minimising manufacturing costs by developing product platforms. This paper presents the results of a field study in which opportunities, limitations and external restraints on the implementation of platform-based approaches in the Dutch house building industry are explored. Based on a cross-sectional analysis, the perceptions of architects, construction firms, suppliers and municipalities are compared. Specific attention is paid to the roles to be fulfilled by these various actors. The study shows that while all the actor-groups agree that a platform-based approach could deliver substantial improvements in the house building process, substantial changes are still necessary to realise this. The implications for each actor-group are then described.

Keywords:

• Product platform
• mass customisation
• house building

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to master's students Mohammed Bodra, Robert Dalenoord, Wouter van Drie, Arjan Horstman and Arjen Roosen for the data-gathering work they performed on their behalf.