Open Process Ecosystems

There is a global interest in large-scale construction and development companies in the application of Product Platforms to achieve a repeatable industrialized house-building system. This paper analyzes and evaluates several Product Platform aspects-modularity, commonality, scalability, resilience, adaptability, flexibility-in light of the particular challenges of multi-storey houses design and manufacturing. We identify and describe these challenges as: Inhabitable space and time. Site specific. Exposed to climate and weather. Lifespan and durability. Size and weight. The convergence of these variables is particular of architectural design discipline. The results show that the complex design needs and constraints of industrialized house-building are not fully covered by Product Platforms, and therefore a more suitable system architecture is needed. Accordingly, in this paper we focus on the following questions: Which design and manufacturing processes can we develop in order to provide a better answer to the specific challenges of multi-storey housing production? How can a specific architectural design approach help to shape these processes? After a comprehensive Product Platforms literature review, this paper introduces the original definition of Open Process Ecosystems as a suitable system architecture, which includes several Product Platforms qualities, but shifts from product to process, and from platform to ecosystem. Additionally, we inquire which parts of this Process Ecosystem work better by being open, welcoming as much heterogeneous and uncertain uses, components, agents and contexts as possible. The paper concludes that Open Process Ecosystems could be a proper systematization framework for an efficient, ecological and successful multi-storey habitats design and manufacturing enterprise and indicates topics for future research.