A good illustration of this can be achieved by looking at the lifecycle of a construction project from design to assembly.
Prefabrication in factories (off-site construction) is often thought of as a panacea, a sure-fire way for construction sites to achieve greater productivity.However, factories can also be run inefficiently, and if traditional construction methods are simply shifted into a factory setting, the benefits of MMC can be diluted or lost..
In some cases, building off-site in a factory may even be less efficient than on-site construction.For example, prefabricated 3D modules (used in modular construction) involve many additional costs compared to conventional build.These include transportation (a pre-fabricated room is mostly air, after all) and heavy plant for lifting modules into place.
Unless modules are fabricated on a just-in time basis they also have to be stored which costs money, especially if that storage needs to be sheltered from the elements.3D modules also occupy large amounts of factory floor space and therefore absorb a high proportion of factory overheads..
If these additional modular construction costs can be offset by large improvements in construction site efficiency, for example by relocating wet trades or complex specialist trades away from the site, a 3D module might make sense.
But, with modular construction, it’s often the case that prefabricating comparatively simple parts of a building as 3D modules adds cost and complexity, especially if the required trades need to be present on-site anyway..Routine laboratory work takes scientists away from research thinking and potentially is a turn-off to those considering a career in laboratories.
However, this is not a simple path.It requires a change in the skill sets required in laboratories: scientists who develop skills in equipment engineering and coding or hardware and software engineers who develop skills in science.
The current education system does not produce cross-fertilised disciplines (although skills like coding are becoming more endemic in the cohorts entering the workforce today).. Perhaps a more pressing problem is the fact that the new workforce of the 2020s is not keen to travel into an office or laboratory to work, preferring working remotely.. For research work and smaller more specialised laboratories, the automation story is different.Without the scale, the investment in robotised systems against simple improvements in efficiency does not add up.