Affordable prefabricated homes designed with digital twin technology may be on the way.
An American factory promises fully digitalized smart homes produced on an assembly line, which, according to the plans, will be capable of manufacturing an average 130 m² residential house in just 45 minutes. This would allow them to be offered at an affordable price, with smaller 65 m² homes potentially available for the dollar equivalent of 26 million Hungarian forints.
The latest response to the housing crisis may come from a construction startup. ADMARES, originating from the Finnish shipbuilding industry, is rethinking the concept of the traditional house factory by building a facility in the U.S. state of Georgia that could be capable of producing more than 16,000 homes per year. In other words, in one year it could produce as many residential houses as the American traditional construction industry could build in ten years with the same capacity.
Their solution takes the concept of lightweight prefabricated homes and modular prefabricated buildings to a new level by placing it in a state-of-the-art manufacturing environment.
In the factory, design, manufacturing, and automation form one integrated system. Using Siemens software, they create comprehensive digital twin models of the homes, which not only serve the design process but also contain key data about the entire manufacturing process, from the structure of the modules to the assembly steps. The house components then move through automated production lines, where robotics and precision engineering ensure consistent quality, speed, and scalability. Finally, the modules are assembled with the support of advanced manufacturing systems and assembly line operators.
The houses are also equipped during production with an integrated sensor network that monitors energy, water, and air quality data in real time. As a result, they can function as smart homes from the very first moment.
This approach enables manufacturing that is up to 90 percent faster while maintaining high quality compared to traditional construction, while also easing problems caused by labor shortages and reducing costs as well as the time spent on on-site construction. According to ADMARES' calculations, this technology could also reduce the construction industry's CO₂ emissions by up to 75 percent in the long term and decrease material waste by 80 percent through the precision of industrial mass production.