SLAM’ interest in off site manufacturing started in 2004 when we started looking into new ways of producing affordable housing. Japan has been leading the way for many years, to the extent that houses are produced on fully automated production lines in a factory. The benefits are obvious mass production and economies of scale. The parallels we draw with the car industry are in the R&D getting the prototype right and defining a finite number of variations that give the end user a degree of customisation.