There's a rather overused analogy comparing industrialized construction with car manufacturing.

It may be relevant for single-family homes and ADUs, but it's flawed when it comes to multifamily.

A somewhat better one may be aerospace.

The car analogy points to a B2C business model where the purchasing agent is the end-customer. It often implies the need for personalization of the product.

This rings true for the modern generation of B2C startups: @coverbuild, @buildatmos, @homeboundhomes, etc.

The car analogy holds for land developers and tract homebuilders.

But like rental car fleet operators (large purchasing agents different from the end-users) they require B2B sales with greater emphasis on ROI rather than B2C personalization.

(What IC companies sell to them?)

When it comes to multifamily, the car analogy breaks.

Even if the building manufacturing can be broken into different "car-like" modules it's just one part of the process. The end-product and the business model differ from auto manufacturing and consumption too much.

In aerospace — similarly to multifamily — asset owners, operators, and users are all different.

The manufacturers design planes with that operating and business model in mind.

Here's a Pulitzer long-read on what it took to design and build Boeing 757: https://special.seattletimes.com/o/news/business/757/part06/index.html

The sad part about this analogy is that the multifamily industry currently designs an equivalent of a bespoke plane every single time.

(Parcel and regulatory variability are some of the main reasons for this, but this must and can be addressed to scale housing production).

If we were to take the plane analogy to heart, we'd need to look for more standardization on the level of the whole building.

It may still allow for some customization of the unit mix to adapt for specific context (akin to airlines customizing the interior and seating plan)