RANJITH K S CE13S026 CE6050 LEAN CONSTRUCTION COCEPTS TOOLS AND PRACTICES

Assignment-3(a) Summary of Lean Construction by Tariq Abdelhamid

The paper discusses on the conventional project management and its deficiencies and the goes on to the introduction of Lean, its concepts and approaches. Construction management according to Clough and Sears (1994) is defined as judicious allocation of resources to complete a project at budget, on time and at desired quality. But the typical construction management fails to deliver above. Koskela (2000) indicate construction project as low efficiency systems due to endemic quality problems as rising litigation. Ballard and Howell (2003) commented failure of conventional construction management as a result of schedule variations. Koskela seminal report 1992 also argued that construction management is a process of transformation of input to output with very little or no management at all. Based on the success of Toyota production system, Koskela conceived a better production management paradigm for project based system. Project was conceptualized as production i.e. Transformation (T) of raw materials into standing structures, as a Flow (F) of the raw materials and information through various processes and as Value (V) generation and creation for owners through elimination of value loss. This concept changes the definition of construction management to the judicious allocation of resources to transform raw materials into standing structures while maximizing flow of material and information, and value to customer. Last planner system developed by Ballard and Howell (1994) incorporates the participation of team members in the process and results in higher production unit performance and helps in producing a reliable workflow between the units. TFV and Last planner system provide foundation for LEAN. But the construction site has complex and chaotic behavior and therefore it should be modelled in such a manner. LEAN is a way to design production systems to minimize waste of materials, time and effort in order to generate maximum amount of value. It ensures participation of all workers in order to bring in continuous improvement. Key points in LEAN construction are:1. Design the product and construction process together to avoid design errors/omissions 2. Managers are the FIRST planners and workers are the LAST planners 3. Project is treated as system and target costing is used 4. Push for high SYSTEM throughput. 5. Cost accruing elements are used as inputs for planning and control operations. 6. Reduction of waste and challenging time/cost/quality trade off to promote better and reliable work flow. 7. Bringing in Value Based Management approach to bring in value to the product.