P-DfMA distils down the variables considerably, providing a smaller number of solutions and components to share across industry, enabling the standardisation of both design and project management processes.
, who will provide a bespoke kitchen using Ikea base units.These take the output from the Ikea kitchen configurator as a starting point, to which they add doors in a range of material finishes, handles and worktops.
So new businesses can be built on top of Platform approaches; in this case, addressing a gap in the market for customers who don’t want the expense of a fully bespoke kitchen, but do want some individuality.. What can we learn?.Customers can leverage the benefits of Ikea (economies of scale) while still getting a bespoke outcome.This addresses one of the concerns that is often raised about Platforms and modern methods of construction more generally – the spectre of ‘cookie cutter’ buildings and identical assets.
Manufacturers can spend less time on the ‘bulk’ components and focus their efforts on the ‘project specific’ parts, and spend more time with customers understanding their individual needs.This is analogous with use of configurators and Platforms – designers can put more effort into the project specific and value-adding design and less into the documentation of the ‘chassis’.. Can we do this?
What should our digital marketplace look like?.
Other sectors have grasped the opportunities and challenges faced by e-commerce in different ways and with different levels of success, but it’s now an unavoidable feature of daily life for most businesses and individuals., from the Maufacturing Technology Centre in 2019. the UK Government's.
The Construction Playbook: Government guidance on sourcing and contracting public works projects and programmes., in 2020. the IPA's.
Transforming Infrastructure Performance: Roadmap to 2030. , published in 2021.Also on this page are our three previous books on platform design for manufacture and assembly (P-DfMA), explaining the use of a platform design approach to construction.