The owners want all of this, but the general contractors tell them it isn’t possible.
Challenges in traditional manufacturing:.Adrian La Porta discusses the limitations of current manufacturing practices, particularly batch chemistry, in meeting the modern demands for higher volumes, complex products, and faster production at lower costs, all while minimising environmental impact.
He points out the inefficiencies and hazards of scaling up production using traditional methods.. 3.Innovation in process intensification and automation:.The podcast emphasises the shift towards process intensification and automation as solutions to the challenges faced by traditional manufacturing.
These innovations promise to deliver lean and agile manufacturing, reducing waste, improving quality, and enabling the production of more complex molecules more efficiently.. 4.The future of pharmaceutical manufacturing:.
A significant focus is on the concept of miniaturisation and continuous processing as part of a new paradigm in drug manufacturing.
This approach not only reduces the environmental footprint and costs but also enhances safety and quality by enabling smaller, more controlled, and flexible production processes.. 5.Bringing up the B2 Atlantic Yards project, Amy Marks explains that the problems caused by the module frames not being reset when needed is an easily fixable issue to learn from, not a reason to write off prefab altogether.. For example, lessons learned from the earlier Victoria Hall project in Wolverhampton (which saw tolerance issues between the modules and core structure of the building), did inspire a shift from concrete to structural steel frames on Atlantic Yards.. Further, while she believes it’s possible to achieve tolerances, she says that not every process (ie.
every contract, every scope, every specification) is currently set up for accurate tolerances.This needs to change, she says, or what we’re aiming to do will be nearly impossible.. “You can't have the same behaviour and think you're going to have some dramatically different result (that's going to be great) all of a sudden.’.
The reality is that making these changes offers a solution to many of the problems we’re facing as an industry at the moment, including poor productivity, low value, excessive amounts of waste, and carbon emissions.We need to find a way to facilitate this shift to industrialised construction because almost nothing is coming out in the way we intended it, Marks says, particularly in terms of cost, certainty, and schedule..