Now imagine a production line that handles things as big as a house. Why? Because the production line produces homes.
Last August, the largest builder in Ontario, Mattamy Homes, opened a mammoth 76,000-square-foot factory that can churn out a fancy-schmancy house in 10 days, then shuttle it -- complete with kitchen cabinets, plumbing and tiles -- on a sophisticated transporter one kilometre to a concrete foundation in Hawthorne Village, a new community in Milton, Ont.
This is a completely different operation from the one used by modular builders, who build modules inside a factory, transport them on a flatbed trailer, then zip them together on site.
It's also different from kit homes, which usually are recreational homes that arrive at a building site for the owner or a hired professional to assemble.
Imagine a giant automaker conveyor belt, and you get the mega-Mattamy idea. But instead of car parts, Mattamy's Stelumar Advanced Manufacturing Plant moves house components past the workstations. Powering up every day at 4 a.m., the conveyor belt at any given time has 10 homes in various stages of completion, and one completed house rolls out the door every day.
This conveyor belt is similar to, yet vastly different from, the concept of Henry Ford's affordable car for the masses in 1921. While Ford built a fortune by churning out millions of identical black Model Ts, Mattamy's moving production line is all about customization and scale to justify the price premium on the luxury product.
"It's definitely more expensive to build a factory home," says Ron Cauchi, president of Mattamy's Stelumar plant and the man Mattamy owner Peter Gilgan recruited from the auto industry two years ago to revolutionize the home-construction business.
Cauchi predicts the price premium will come down with experience.
Meanwhile, on the plus side of this type of home construction are quality control and significant savings, including reduced wastage.
"This is still very much an experiment and we are evaluating the various technologies," says Cauchi. "We have to do it long enough to understand the cost effect. It's been eight months and we are up to a home a day."
When Hawthorne Village is finished, almost half of the 1,600 homes will have been built in the Stelumar factory, while the rest will be built in the traditional way -- work crews on the job site from dawn to dusk until the key is handed to the buyer.
The final act will be to de-construct the Stelumar factory and move it to Mattamy's next large construction site.
Mattamy also has a second, less spectacular factory in Cambridge, Ont., which supplies the Stelumar plant with prefabricated walls and floor panels. This is a similar operation to the new Halliday Homes-Sienna Homes operation in Carleton Place, just west of Ottawa, which was unveiled last week. There is no conveyor belt at the plant and work crews put the parts together on site to make a house.
This is an option that may have legs in the construction industry, says Cauchi. Indeed, Gilgan has already said there will be more of these plants across Ontario, and Mattamy's Ottawa president Troy van Haastrecht is investigating all options to manufacture homes for Ottawa in a controlled setting.
"We are fairly early on in our investigations, but we believe in technology and where we can employ it," says van Haastrecht, noting the severe winter, snow accumulation and labour shortages caused too many delays on Ottawa's Mattamy sites this past year, including waits to get construction started.
"It still takes 130 days from foundation to closing," says van Haastrecht, adding any construction delay is unacceptable. "For sure, we would like to reduce the number of delays."
The decision on the factory will come down to a cost analysis, says van Haastrecht, who brought Mattamy to Ottawa in 2006. The careful executive quickly opened a major site in suburban Kanata and then one in suburban Barrhaven, capturing sales and becoming a force in the area. "Once our model is determined, then we will look at where to place a factory."
A second leading Ottawa builder is also aggressively looking at factory-built homes and components to ease the housing industry labour shortage predicted as aging workers retire and a smaller, younger workforce takes other jobs.
There are four good reasons to go with a factory option, says this builder, who asked not to be identified because final decisions have not been made. There is less construction waste, a better quality product, the process is not influenced by severe weather, and younger workers may be attracted to working indoors in a controlled setting away from freezing winter temperatures and sweltering summer afternoons.
"This is not a short-term decision, but it's going to happen and it's going to happen for sure," the builder says.
Margret Gallo, owner of Sienna Homes and Halliday Homes, has already taken the first step, hoping to band together the region's smaller builders into a bigger buying group at her newly expanded factory in Carleton Place.
After all, there's power in numbers. It's a smart philosophy in an industry where 80 per cent of the builders are small-scale and where the big boys and girls control 80 per cent of the sales.
--Canwest News Service
