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oofbeyyesterday at 6:36 PM3 repliesview on HN

You can’t standardize manufacturing of multi billion dollar facilities. Economies of scale just don’t work that way. Even residential housing has the same problem. There’s too much variation in on-site construction.


Replies

bluGillyesterday at 6:54 PM

Single family homes are very much standardized. You get doors in one of 6 widths (IIRC), and they are all the same height (closet doors are a different height, but otherwise standard). You get windows in a few dozen sizes. You get your wall studs in one of two lengths. And so on.

There is a lot of variation of layout possible within the constraints of the standard. However the vast majority of the hard work is done in a factory to standard sizes, and the onsite work is just final assembly to easy to change specs, so there would be no advantage to a standard.

bathtub365yesterday at 6:45 PM

New suburb housing developments in North America typically use a handful of floorplans that are customized very slightly across many homes specifically so they don’t need hundreds of unique designs

MengerSpongeyesterday at 6:42 PM

You absolutely can. Read up on the French nuclear reactor fleet!

https://worksinprogress.co/issue/liberte-egalite-radioactivi...

There are minor variances locally, but you can make enough components common to benefit massively from economies of scale.