Companies in the business of building large capital projects—power stations, chemicals plants, oil rigs, amusement parks, and the like—have long faced a quandary. The scale and highly specialized nature of such undertakings might seem to require heavily engineered custom treatment. Yet that approach, to the dismay of the contractor’s shareholders, depends on large amounts of the contractor’s capital.

Chemicals companies, for instance, produce their chemicals and gases in different volumes and proportions, and the capacities of their plants must correspond to the market’s demand for these substances. Any builder of such plants wants to put them up as simply, quickly, and cheaply as possible, but the obvious way of doing so—using standardized parts, designs, and construction techniques—ignores variations in the needs of the purchasers. Is there any way to satisfy the relatively few (but individually significant) customers for the plants while containing capital expenditures, often the biggest item on a builder’s balance sheet?

One manufacturer of chemicals plants has found a way to meet both sets of demands—and thus to create considerable value. It has done so by defying the instincts of many of its own engineers and borrowing a number of principles from a very different operating environment:...