I believe the premise of many of these panelization/pre-fab companies is that manual labor is minimized within the factory through automation and also reduced o

I believe the premise of many of these panelization/pre-fab companies is that manual labor is minimized within the factory through automation and also reduced on-site. There is also the waste reduction aspect. Definitely does seem that the devil is in the details on how much automation actually gets used, and to what degree the panels are finished vs. needing on-site tradeswork. Maybe in engineered production it is not far from a wash between less spent on on-site labor and waste vs. more spent on up-front engineering. Like we often see with automation and rigor, I suppose the up-front costs really only get amortized over multiple units produced. The Blueprint Robotics company I mentioned as an example apparently now focuses on multi-unit dwellings. Quality and repeatability, usually things that (IMO, sadly) are not highly valued in the North American market, are almost certainly improved through engineered production, but I suppose if you don't value those things, you can also keep labor costs down. Anyway, it would be nice to see some typical and aggregate quantification of these things to really understand.