Managing Director of WEINMANN
WEINMANN technology is shaping the global market for prefabricated timber building. WEINMANN’s computer-controlled, automated machinery is not only productive – its biggest installation to date produces components for 2,000 houses a year on a single shift – it can also manufacture increasingly finished articles. Such components, in turn, speed up construction, delivering weathertight house shells in as little as three days. Their insulation and airtightness levels also make achieving environment standards like Passivhaus a shoe-in.
Almost as incongruous as its location is the fact that WEINMANN began in the 1980s making machines for pallets. It didn’t stay making them the conventional way for long, however. The company’s founding partners, fellow Reutlingen mechanical engineering graduates Karl Weinmann, Alfred Schlegel, and Hansbert Ott, were soon applying their expertise to automating production. The result was an advanced CNC nailing system and the seeds of the future WEINMANN operation.
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The Rise of Factory-built Housing: Episode 6
Have we hit a tipping point for residential construction where the cost and quality of a factory-built home always compares favorably to the cost and quality of a conventionally-built home? Are Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and venture capitalists beginning to train their sights on this mammoth industry? In the sixth and final episode of a series on the future of homebuilding, Andrew discusses how entrepreneurs eager to disrupt this space might conceive of building and financing a modern homebuilding factory.
Images & videos courtesy of Weinmann