If you’ve ever purchased ready-to-assemble furniture at IKEA or if you’ve put together toys on Christmas Eve you have been involved with prefabricated products. Partially constructed products that are ready for assembly are becoming more common in our daily lives. The prefabrication concept in construction is growing in this country and around the world as the labor force and the number of skilled workers continues to decline. Even before this labor shortage, construction productivity had lagged behind almost all other industries.
According to a recent McKinsey & Company study, since 1945 productivity in manufacturing, retail, and agriculture has grown by as much as 1,500 percent while productivity in construction has barely increased at all. The prefabricated curtain wall panel business can provide one of the answers to increasing productivity.