The application of a new production philosophy, leading to "lean production" (using less space, less human effort, less product development time etc), is expected to change almost every industry and bring about radical changes in the organization of work. This text examines this process.
Lean Construction Alarcon.pdf
Lean construction is a combination of operational research and practical development in design and construction with an adoption of lean manufacturing principles and practices to the end-to-end design and construction process. Unlike manufacturing, construction is a project-based production process. Lean Construction is concerned with the alignment and holistic pursuit of concurrent and continuous improvements in all dimensions of the built and natural environment: design, construction, activation, maintenance, salvaging, and recycling (Abdelhamid 2007, Abdelhamid et al. 2008). This approach tries to manage and improve construction processes with minimum cost and maximum value by considering customer needs. (Koskela et al. 2002[1])
Lauri Koskela, in 1992, challenged the construction management community to consider the inadequacies of the time-cost-quality tradeoff paradigm.[2] Another paradigm-breaking anomaly was that observed by Ballard (1994[3]), Ballard and Howell (1994a[4] and 1994b), and Howell (1998). Analysis of project plan failures indicated that "normally only about 50% of the tasks on weekly work plans are completed by the end of the plan week" and that constructors could mitigate most of the problems through "active management of variability, starting with the structuring of the project (temporary production system) and continuing through its operation and improvement" (Ballard and Howell 2003[5]).
Evidence from research and observations indicated that the conceptual models of Construction Management and the tools it utilizes (work breakdown structure, critical path method, and earned value management) fail to deliver projects 'on-time, at budget, and at desired quality' (Abdelhamid 2004). With recurring negative experiences on projects, evidenced by endemic quality problems and rising litigation, it became evident that the governing principles of construction management needed revisiting. One comment published by the CMAA, in its Sixth Annual Survey of Owners (2006), pointed to concern about work methods and the cost of waste:
"While the cost of steel and cement are making headlines, the less publicized failures in the management of construction projects can be disastrous. Listen carefully to the message in this comment. We are not talking about just materials, methods, equipment, or contract documents. We are talking about how we work to deliver successful capital projects and how we manage the costs of inefficiency."[6]
Koskela (2000)[7] argued that the mismatch between the conceptual models and observed reality underscored the lack of robustness in the existing constructs and signaled the need for a theory of production in construction. Koskela then used the ideal production system embodied in the Toyota Production System to develop a more overarching production management paradigm for project-based production systems where production is conceptualized in three complementary ways, namely, as a Transformation (T), as a Flow (F), and as Value generation (V).
Recognizing that construction sites reflect prototypical behavior of complex and chaotic systems, especially in the flow of both material and information on and off site, Bertelsen (2003a and 2003b) suggested that construction should be modeled using chaos and complex systems theory.Bertelsen (2003b) specifically argued that construction could and should be understood in three complementary ways:
While the term lean construction may have been coined by the International Group for Lean Construction in its first meeting in 1993 (Gleeson et al. 2007). ) Greg Howell and Glenn Ballard, there are instances of rigorous LEAN process thinking all the way back to the Arsenal in Venice in the 1450s, and the first person to truly integrate an entire production process, Henry Ford. At Highland Park, MI, in 1913 he married consistently interchangeable parts with standard work and moving conveyance to create what he called flow production. The public grasped this in the dramatic form of the moving assembly line, but from the standpoint of the manufacturing engineer the breakthroughs actually went much further. (Note: The founders of the Lean Construction Institute in 1997) both maintain that Construction in Lean Construction refers to the entire industry and not the phase during which construction takes place. Thus, Lean Construction is for owners, architects, designers, engineers, constructors, suppliers & end users.)
The reference to Lean Construction as a proper noun is not an attempt to falsely distinguish it from other areas that focus on construction project management. It is a proper noun because it refers to a very specific set of concepts, principles, and practices that are distinct from conventional design and construction management practices .
"One can think of lean construction in a way similar to mesoeconomics. Lean construction draws upon the principles of project-level management and upon the principles that govern production-level management. Lean construction recognizes that any successful project undertaking will inevitably involve the interaction between project and production management." (Abdelhamid 2007)
Lean construction supplements traditional construction management approaches with (Abdelhamid 2007): (1) two critical and necessary dimensions for successful capital project delivery by requiring the deliberate consideration of material and information flow and value generation in a production system; and (2) different project and production management (planning-execution-control) paradigms.
While lean construction is identical to lean production in spirit, it is different in how it was conceived as well as how it is practiced. There is a view that "adaptation" of Lean Manufacturing/Production forms the basis of Lean Construction. The view of Lauri Koskela, Greg Howell, and Glenn Ballard is very different, with the origin of lean construction arising mainly from the need for a production theory in construction and anomalies that were observed in the reliability of weekly production planning.
Getting work to flow reliably and predictably on a construction site requires the impeccable alignment of the entire supply chain responsible for constructed facilities such that value is maximized and waste is minimized. With such a broad scope, it is fair to say that tools found in Lean Manufacturing and Lean Production, as practiced by Toyota and others, have been adapted to be used in the fulfillment of Lean construction principles. TQM, SPC, six-sigma, have all found their way into lean construction. Similarly, tools and methods found in other areas, such as in social science and business, are used where they are applicable. The tools and methods in construction management, such as CPM and work breakdown structure, etc., are also utilized in lean construction implementations.
If the tool, method, and/or technique will assist in fulfilling the aims of lean construction, it is considered a part of the toolkit available for use. A sampling of these tools includes: BIM (Lean Design), A3, process design (Lean Design), offsite fabrication and JIT (Lean Supply), value chain mapping (Lean Assembly), visual site (Lean Assembly); 5S (Lean Assembly), daily crew huddles (Lean Assembly).
Solutions that integrate construction planning, procurement, and project delivery are now readily available. The enable lean methods such as Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) and Job Order Contracting (JOC).
The early involvement of contractors and suppliers is seen as a key differentiator for construction so called 'best practice'.[10] While there are Trade Marked business processes (see below), academics have also addressed related concepts such as 'early contractor involvement' (ECI).[11]
adaptation of process to organizational requirements, locally researched, fully transparent and verifiable construction cost data, full regulatoryu compliance and auditability, focus upon programmatic processes applied to all associated construction, repair, renovation, or maintenance projects and work orders, collaborative and scalable cloud technology and the proactive integration of construction planning, procurement, and project deliverywith a focus on value outcomes for all participants and stakeholders
In America, Job Order Contracting (JOC) uses explicit lean construction principles. JOC requires a long-term multi-party agreement, a collaborative environment, and a common data environment as signified by a locally researched detailed unit price book. More specifically JOC includes; direct owner leadership, adaptation of process to organizational requirements, locally researched, fully transparent and verifiable construction cost data, full regulatoryu compliance and auditability, focus upon programmatic processes applied to all associated construction, repair, renovation, or maintenance projects and work orders, collaborative and scalable cloud technology and the proactive integration of construction planning, procurement, and project deliverywith a focus on value outcomes for all participants and stakeholders
In the UK, a major R&D project, Building Down Barriers, was launched in 1997 to adapt the Toyota Production System for use in the construction sector. The resulting supply chain management toolset was tested and refined on two pilot projects and the comprehensive and detailed process-based toolset was published in 2000 as the 'Building Down Barriers Handbook of Supply Chain Management-The Essentials'. The project demonstrated very clearly that lean thinking would only deliver major performance improvements if the construction sector learned from the extensive experience of other business sectors. Lean thinking must become the way that all the firms in the design and construction supply chain co-operate with each other at a strategic level that over-arches individual projects. In the aerospace sector, these long-term supply-side relationships are called a 'Virtual Company', in other business sectors they are called an 'Extended Lean Enterprise'. 2ff7e9595c
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