Production process for manufactured housing

A manufactured home is completely built in a controlled factory environment. Despite a large share of the market, the manufactured housing industry has a long way to go towards streamlining its production process. The objective of this paper is to map the production process of a manufactured housing factory and to demonstrate via simulation how the process can be improved. The production process including assembly, feeder, and storage stations were mapped using data from several manufactured housing plants and in-depth case studies at two plants in northern Indiana. The case study plants were also used for collecting cycle-time data for developing the simulation model for the roofing process. Subsequently, four "what if" scenarios were conducted to illustrate potential improvements to the production process. The efforts presented in this paper are part of on-going research sponsored by the National Science Foundation under the Partnership for Advancement of Technology in Housing (PATH) initiative.