A Review of Global Lean Construction During The Past Two Decades Analysis and Visualization

Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management
A review of global lean construction during the past two decades: analysis and
visualization
Long Li, Zhongfu Li, Xiaodan Li, Guangdong Wu,
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A review of
A review of global lean global lean
construction during the past two construction
decades: analysis and visualization

Long Li
Department of Construction Management,
Received 12 April 2018
Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China Revised 2 July 2018
Zhongfu Li and Xiaodan Li Accepted 18 July 2018
Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China, and

Guangdong Wu
Chongqing University, Chongqing, China
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide comprehensive analysis and understanding of lean
construction (LC) and to help researchers to find new gaps and research opportunities and develop potential
collaboration chances.
Design/methodology/approach – The bibliographic data were obtained in peer-reviewed journals. The
science mapping analysis and social network analysis (SNA) were used to conduct the analysis and
visualization. Science mapping was performed to identify the research topics, evolution and the relationships
between these topics. Also, the most influential LC-related articles in each topic were identified based on the
concept of H-classics. SNA was also used to explore the collaboration status of authors and to identify the core
authors in the LC field.
Findings – The results showed that topics in the LC field are consistently and continuously changing, which
also reveals the fact that the lean concept system has evolved over time to a certain extent. The topics that
could form the knowledge base of the LC research field in the future are related to two thematic areas: supply
chain management (SCM) and planning and scheduling. SCM focuses on developing a system where supplier
and client work together in coordination to deliver materials, works, equipment and labor and other resources.
Moreover, prefabrication is a new hot topic, while BIM is a well-developed and isolated topic in the last five
years. This result indicates that more studies need to be conducted in the future, to promote the integration of
BIM and lean practices in the construction phase, as well as to explore the value of BIM in the reduction or
elimination of waste and lean project delivery. As for global collaborations, LC research has been widely
pursued throughout the world. The USA and the UK play the most dominant role in the international
collaboration network.
Research limitations/implications – Since the analysis of data takes some time, the specific results of this
paper are limited to articles published in peer-reviewed journals, which leads to a certain degree of research lag.
Practical implications – This paper provides insights (such as major journals, institutions, key scholars, the
evolution of topics, highly indexed articles and the new LC trends in the last five years) for researchers in the
LC field.
Originality/value – This paper gives a general review of the above-mentioned literature, including the
number of LC-related articles published in each year, as well as the major journals and main contributors to
the field of LC.
Keywords Scientometrics, Methodology, Social network analysis, Building information modelling,
Science mapping, Lean construction, Approach
Paper type Literature review
1. Introduction
Lean construction (LC) is a new way to manage construction projects. In practice, LC aims to
minimize the waste of materials and time and to generate the maximum value (Koskela et al.,
2002). As a process-oriented approach derived from the Toyota Production System (TPS), Engineering, Construction and
Architectural Management
LC has been widely adopted as a means to efficiently deliver capital projects in the © Emerald Publishing Limited
0969-9988
architecture–engineering–construction (AEC) industry (Tommelein, 2015). Meanwhile, LC DOI 10.1108/ECAM-03-2018-0133
ECAM research has attracted the attention of many scholars and has been studied from various
aspects, including the following: LC theories and principles (Ko and Chung, 2014; Shewchuk
and Guo, 2012), the interaction of LC and Information technology (IT) and prefabrication
technology (Sacks and Koskela, 2010; Said, 2015) and the value of LC to sustainability
(Lapinski et al., 2006; Wu et al., 2013). A few review articles about LC have been conducted
during the past two decades. For example, Alves and Tsao (2007) identified more than 14
research areas by analyzing the keywords in the International Group for Lean Construction
(IGLC) conference proceedings from 2000 to 2006. Francois Jacobs (2010) conducted a
qualitative content analysis of LC based on IGLC articles from 1996 to 2009. The study was
conducted to determine if LC research aligned with the TPS framework. Etges et al. (2012)
presented a review of lean practices between 1993 and 2010, also based on the IGLC
conference proceedings. They identified more than ten categories of lean practices.
Tommelein (2015) presented a historical view of LC based on her personal experience.
Tommelein concluded that LC has caused a paradigm shift from non-lean to lean thinking
for those involved in the design and managing of AEC projects.
The above review articles (using qualitative content analysis) can significantly help
researchers capture an overall picture of a research field and contribute to a comprehensive
understanding of a specific topic. However, limitations of previous review studies are
manifested in two aspects. On the one hand, these articles partially depend on the researcher’s
personal insights or intuitive actions (Li et al., 2014). Therefore, it can be difficult for readers to
clearly follow the researcher’s analysis and resulting conclusions (Elo et al., 2014). In contrast
to a qualitative analysis, the scientometric analysis, which is based on mathematical,
statistical and data-analytical methods, can overcome this limitation (Zhai et al., 2014). Major
themes, the evolution of topics in consecutive years and the structure of the collaboration
network of scholars can be identified by using the scientometric analysis and social network
analysis (SNA) method (Chen et al., 2013; Hong et al., 2016; Zhai et al., 2014). Despite the
significance of these new quantitative methods (such as scientometric analysis, science
mapping, and SNA), no such work has been undertaken in the field of LC. Topics in the LC
field cover the knowledge of different disciplines, such as management science, system
engineering, information theory and production engineering (PE) (Salem et al., 2006; Saurin
et al., 2008; Wang et al., 2009; Zhang et al., 2015). The theories and methods of all these
disciplines have been developing and growing during the past 20 years. Therefore, it is more
difficult to analyze the structures of and relationships between these topics using the content
analysis method. Although LC originated from TPS, as yet, no common understanding that is
unique to the construction industry has been established, according to Francois Jacobs (2010).
On the other hand, previous studies only reviewed articles within the limits of the IGLC
community. That is, a plenty of articles of high quality published in peer-reviewed journals have
not been analyzed and reviewed. As suggested by Pasquire and Connor (2011), a comprehensive
review of these LC studies beyond IGLC community can promote the development of a broader
body of knowledge of LC to a wider academic arena. Hence, this paper attempts to achieve an
understanding of the knowledge structure, research trends and collaboration status of scholars
in the area of LC research. The specific objectives of this study are to: determine what topics
have been covered in the LC field; analyze the evolution of research themes and explore the
future research direction of LC; identify which countries, institutions and scholars were the
primary contributors to LC research; and identify the critical authors in the co-authorship
network and explore and visualize the international collaborations in the LC field.
2. Methodologies
2.1 Data collection
As stated in Section 1, LC is a comprehensive research area, which draws on a wide variety of
established subjects, including natural science, social science, engineering and management.
Some important journals in the LC field (such as Lean Construction Journal (LCJ), A review of
Construction Management and Economics and Construction Innovation) are not included in global lean
the Web of Science. These three peer-review journals have been acknowledged as valuable by construction
the research community in the construction industry (Hong et al., 2012; Li et al., 2014).
A considerable number of articles relating to LC have been published in these journals.
Therefore, Scopus (which contains more extensive databases in different scientific fields than
does the Web of Science) was chosen as the main search engine in this study. Besides, some
extra articles that are not indexed by Scopus were searched in journals. The workflow for this
scientometric analysis is shown in Figure 1 and is explained as follows:
• Step 1: journal articles were searched in Scopus (up to November 2016) using the
search strings:
TITLE-ABS-KEY (lean construction) AND DOCTYPE (ar)
AND (LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA, “ENGI”) OR LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA, “BUSI”) OR
LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA, “SOCI”) OR LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA, “COMP”) OR LIMIT-TO

(SUBJAREA, “ENVI”) OR LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA, “ENER”) OR LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA,
“MATE”) OR LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA, “DECI”) OR LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA, “ARTS”) OR
LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA, “MATH”) OR LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA, “ECON”) OR LIMIT-TO
(SUBJAREA, “MULT”) OR LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA, “PSYC”))
AND (LIMIT-TO (LANGUAGE, “English”)) AND (LIMIT-TO (SRCTYPE, “j”))
• Step 2: the Scopus covered issues of the LCJ only since 2015, meaning that articles of
LCJ before 2015 are not shown in the search result. Thus, the analysis purely using this
Data retrieval in the Scopus database
Step 1 TITLE-ABS-KEY Limited the subject area,

(lean construction) language and source type
Search in Journal
Thorough search into

Step 2 TITLE-ABS-KEY
journals to supplement
(lean construction)
the search result in Step 1
Read abstracts
Step 3 Identify the first journal

Exclude irrelevant
article that was published
papers
in 1997
Preprocess the data
Standardize the Standardize the names of

keywords authors
Figure 1.
Step 4
Summary of the
Science mapping workflow for the
Social network analysis scientometric analysis
analysis
ECAM search engine was not adequate. To fill up this gap, a specific search into the individual
target journal websites was further conducted in this step. In this step, a thorough
search into journals was processed to supplement the search result of Scopus.
• Step 3: all the abstracts were read, in order to filter out any irrelevant articles. During
this step, the abstracts that include terms such as “lean concrete,” “lean cement,”
“lean duplex,” “lean hydrogen,” “lean combustion” and “lean-mix” were excluded
because the word “lean” in these contexts actually means “thin.” The articles which
contain statements such as “lean thinking in construction” or “apply lean principles
to construction” were retained. After this step, all the remaining articles were
guaranteed to be related to LC. The timeframe covered by this study is from 1997 to
2016 because the first LC-related international article was published in 1997.
Ultimately, 370 related articles were collected.
• Step 4: data such as keywords and authors’ names were preprocessed. Keywords
such as “theory of constraint,” “theory of constraints,” “total constraint

management,” “supply chain,” “supply chains,” “building information modeling,”
“building information modeling,” “value stream mapping” and “value stream
mapping” have all been standardized. The authors’ names, such as Alarcón, L.F.
and Alarcon, L.F.; González, V., González, V.A., and Gonzalez, V.; Low, S.P., and
Pheng, L.S.; Pasquire, C., and Pasquire, C.L., were also standardized. This was done
after checking these names on each author’s detail page in Scopus, as well as the
authors’ personal homepages. Afterward, terms in the LC field that have similar
meanings are put into groups based on corresponding articles. For example, because
both of “planning” and “scheduling” mean the process of thinking about future
activities under conditions of uncertainty (Sriprasert and Dawood, 2003), this paper
grouped these two keywords into planning and scheduling (P&S) group. Also, the
meaningless words and general words that cannot be used to distinguish topics, such
as “construction industry,” “research,” “model” and “surveys,” are all excluded.
2.2 Science mapping analysis

Science mapping analysis is a means to identify the cognitive structure and evolution of a
research field. The general workflow of science mapping analysis involves a number of
steps: co-word network extraction, normalization, clustering and visualization (Heradio
et al., 2016; Murgado-Armenteros et al., 2015). Then co-word network is developed based on
the assumption that keywords extracted from these data can be understood as a short
description of a research theme (Wang et al., 2012). The normalization process is carried out
by using improved indexes (namely the inclusion index, the proximity index and the
equivalence index) to estimate the strength of association between keywords. Among these
three indices, the equivalence index: E ij ¼ ðF 2ij =F i F j Þ is the most appropriate for
normalizing co-occurrence frequencies (Van Eck and Waltman, 2009; Wang et al., 2012).
Here, Fi and Fj are the occurrence frequency of keyword i and keyword j, respectively; Fij is
the co-occurrence frequency of the keyword pair i and j, and Eij is the equivalence index of
keyword i and keyword j.
The equivalence index can then be used by cluster algorithms to identify clusters of
strongly linked keywords. Each cluster represents a topic. In this paper, the simple center
algorithm (Coulter et al., 1998) is used to conduct the cluster analysis.
In the last step of science mapping, the strategic diagram (Cobo et al., 2012; Zong et al.,
2012) is used to represent the role of all topics in a specific period. As Figure 3 shows, topics
are classified into four quadrants, according to the cluster’s centrality (the x-axis) and
density (the y-axis). The density of a cluster estimates the internalP coherence by measuring
the strength of links in the cluster and defined by Dcluster ¼ 100 E ij =n . The centrality
of a cluster P measures the degree of interaction with other clusters and defined by A review of
C cluster ¼ 10 E ij ; where Dcluster is the density of a cluster; cluster is the centrality of a global lean
cluster; n is the number of keywords in a cluster; and Eij is the equivalence index of keyword construction
i and keyword j.
The topics in Quadrant 1 are initially known as motor topics defined by Cobo et al.
(2012). Motor topics are those topics that the number of articles on this topic grew
dramatically in a period. Keywords in motor topics often have strong relationships with
other keywords belonging to this topic or other topics in the same period. More exactly,
motor topics have higher density and stronger centrality. The topics in Quadrant 2 are
transversal topics or general and basic topics. Transversal topics are important for a
research field as they have strong centralities. But they are not well developed for that the
number of articles contains a pair of keywords in these topics are few. Both weakly
developed and marginal topics are found in Quadrant 3. Topics in Quadrant 3 represent
either emerging or disappearing topics as the low density and low centrality. The topics in
Quadrant 4 are often considered as peripheral work because they have low external ties
and well-structured internal links.
Because the terms used in a research area change over time, the conceptual evolution
map is used to represent the emergence and development of any research area over
consecutive periods. Some measures, such as the Pearson correlation coefficient, Salton’s
Cosine formula, the Jaccard Index and the inclusion index (Sternitzke and Bergmann, 2009)
were previously proposed to quantify the degree of evolution. This paper followed the
recommendations given by Sternitzke and Bergmann (2009) and use the inclusion index:
I ¼ #(C∩C′)/min(#C,#C′), to build the conceptual evolution maps of the LC research area.
Here, C and C′ are the two sets in two periods. The symbol # represents the number of
keywords in a period. During the science mapping analysis, the time span is a parameter
used to define the number of years in a period. The best option would have been to set the
time span to one year. However, it was found that data generated in the span of
one year were insufficient to obtain good results from science mapping analysis. Therefore,
the entire time period was subdivided into periods of more than one year. This paper sets
the time span to five years in accordance with other similar science mapping studies
(Heradio et al., 2016; Murgado-Armenteros et al., 2015; Wang et al., 2015).
2.3 Social network analysis (SNA)

SNA (which is based on the network theory) can reveal the structure of the entire network
and the relationships between actors (Zhai et al., 2014). As one of the common social
networks, the co-authorship network is used to evaluate the cooperation status of scholars
(Kumar, 2015). A number of empirical studies have attempted to analyze the characteristics
of co-authorship networks (Abbasi et al., 2011; Liu et al., 2012; Zhai et al., 2014). Several
indicators (e.g. network density, connectedness, clustering coefficient, centralization, etc.)
are used to describe the characteristics of the whole network, while indicators (such as
degree centrality, betweenness centrality and closeness centrality) are used to reflect the
different influences of different nodes in a social network (Abbasi et al., 2011). Specifically,
network density is defined as a ratio of the number of ties to the number of possible ties in a
network; connectedness means the proportion of pairs of nodes that are reachable;
clustering coefficient is the measure of degree to which nodes in a network tend to cluster
together; centralization including degree centralization, betweenness centralization and
closeness centralization refers to the overall cohesion or integration of the network; and the
value of centralization is calculated based on all the nodes centrality. All indicators of the
whole network have no units; degree centrality represents the number of ties to others;
betweenness centrality means the frequency with which a node lies along the geodesic
pathways of other nodes; and closeness centrality refers to the graph-theoretic distance of a
ECAM node to other nodes. All these three indicators of nodes are often standardized into relative
values with no units. In this paper, degree centrality and betweenness centrality are used to
identify the key authors.
3. Results and analysis

3.1 General description
The results of the systematic literature review (including the yearly distribution of
publications, major journals, countries, institutions and authors) are presented in this section.
As shown in Figure 2(a), LC-related studies are continual, and the number of articles
published in journals has shown a tendency to grow during the 20-year study period. The
number of articles has reached the peak in 2015. In particular, the increase between 2006 and
2011 was remarkably steady.
Table I shows the journals that published at least three LC-related articles
(approximately 1 percent of the total publications) in the past. These articles cover about
69 percent of total collected articles. This result corresponds to the fact that the scope of LC
research intersects with various fields, including green building, design management and
supply chain management (SCM). The journals with the highest quantity of LC-related
articles were the LCJ, the Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, which to
date have published 56 and 43 articles about LC.
The publication outputs of different countries and institutions were calculated according
to the authors’ addresses. A total of 50 countries or regions were involved in the LC research
area, and the top 20 countries are shown in Figure 2(b). Each country shown in Figure 2(b)
has contributed at least six articles. Among these countries, the USA’s publications have
been the most productive (with over 100 articles), followed by the UK, Sweden and Israel.
A total of 163 institutions or universities have contributed to LC research. As shown in
Table II, the UC Berkeley and Technion – Israel Institute of Technology were the two
biggest contributors to LC research.
The most highly productive authors are identified according to the number of LC-related
articles (approximately 1 percent of the total articles published) and the cumulative citations of
these articles. As can be seen in Figure 2(c), Ballard, G. and Sacks, R. are the most productive
authors, followed by Koskela, L.; Tommelein, I.D.; Alarcón, L.F., Howell, G.A.; and Horman, M.J.
3.2 Science mapping of lean construction

To analyze the evolution and research trends in the area of LC research, all relevant articles
were divided into three consecutive periods of time, namely 1997–2006 (Period 1, with 63
articles and 364 keywords), 2007–2011 (Period 2, with 137 articles and 1,040 keywords) and
2012–2016 (Period 3, with 170 articles and 1,193 keywords). Note that the time span of each
period was set to five years, in accordance with other similar science mapping studies
(Heradio et al., 2016; Murgado-Armenteros et al., 2015; Wang et al., 2015). Although it is
common to use periods covering the same time span, the decision was taken to have the
Period 1 span 10 years because far fewer LC-related articles were published from 1997 to
2001 (see Figure 2(a)).
A simple centers algorithm is used to detect the main topics in each period. These topics
are arranged on a strategic diagram (as shown in Figure 3), according to the degree of
centrality and density. Topics are represented as nodes. Each node’s size is proportional to
the number of associated articles. Moreover, the most highly cited articles of each topic are
identified based on the concept of H-classics and H-index defined by Martínez et al. (2014).
H-classics of a research area is composed of the H highly cited articles with more than
H citations each. Just as the threshold of the most highly cited articles, the H-index
represents the number of articles in H-classics. The topics, number of articles in each topic,
(a) A review of
60 42 47 global lean
Number of
40 32 46 35
construction
articles
25 23 23
9 9 14 12 15 19
20 5 2 2 3 6
1
0
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
Year
(b)
120 104
100
Number of
80
articles
57
60
40 19 17 16 15 15 15 14 11
10 10 9 9 9 9 9
20 8 7 6
0
USA
Sweden
Israel
South Korea
Australia
Canada
Singapore
Chile
Brazil
India
Hong Kong
Malaysia
Netherlands
Taiwan
Germany
China
Egypt
New Zealand
Denmark
UK
Country
(c)
1,200 Ballard, G.
Sacks, R.
1,000
800
Cumulative citations
Koskela, L.
Tommelein, I.D.
600 Horman, M.J.
400 Howell, G.A. Alarcón, L.F.
Rozenfeld, O. Emmitt, S.
González, V.
200 Al-Hussein, M. Pasquire, C.
Nahmens, I.
Ikuma, L.H. Low, S.P.
Maturana, S.
Abourizk, S.M. Wu, P.
Ko, C.-H. Gao, S.
0 Kim, Y.-W. Figure 2.
0 5 10 15 20 25 General description of
Number of articles yearly distribution of
publications, countries
Notes: (a) Evolution over time (from January 1997 to November 2016); (b) research origin and authors
of LC articles published; (c) cumulative citations per author (top 21 authors)
the number of citations the articles received on average, the H-index and the H-classics in the
three periods are all shown in Table III.
3.2.1 Period 1. According to Figure 3(b), Period 1 includes four topics. On average,
articles in the cost and cost management (Cost and CM) group were the most frequently
cited articles. The high density and centrality of the LC group, as well as the increased
ECAM No. Journal No. of articles
1 Lean Construction Journal 56

2 Journal of Construction Engineering and Management 43
3 Construction Management and Economics 19
4 Journal of Management in Engineering 18
5 Automation in Construction 12
6 Engineering Construction and Architectural Management 10
7 Construction Innovation 10
8 Journal of Financial Management of Property and Construction 10
9 Architectural Engineering and Design Management 8
10 Journal of Green Building 7
11 KSCE Journal of Civil Engineering 7
12 Electronic Journal of Information Technology in Construction 5
13 International Journal of Construction Management 5
14 Journal of Civil Engineering and Management 5

15 Building Engineer 4
16 International Journal of Lean Six Sigma 4
17 Journal of Architectural Engineering 4
18 Practice Periodical on Structural Design and Construction 4
19 Building Research and Information 3
20 Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering 3
21 International Journal for Housing Science and Its Applications 3
22 International Journal of Project Management 3
Table I. 23 Journal of Engineering Design and Technology 3
Journals contributing 24 Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education and Practice 3
to more than 25 Quality Engineering 3
three articles 26 Supply Chain Management 3
Institution/university No. of articles Country/region
UC Berkeley 19 USA
Technion – Israel Institute of Technology 15 Israel
University of Salford 14 UK
Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile 13 Chile
National University of Singapore 13 Singapore
Loughborough University 13 UK
University of Alberta 10 Canada
Luleå University of Technology 9 Sweden
University of Auckland 8 New Zealand
Louisiana State University 7 USA
Pennsylvania State University 6 USA
Nottingham Trent University 6 UK
San Diego State University 6 USA
Arizona State University 5 USA
National Pingtung University of Science and Technology 5 Taiwan
University of Washington Seattle 5 USA
Table II. The University of Hong Kong 4 Hong Kong
Research centers Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul 4 Brazil
contributing to more Oregon State University 4 USA
than four articles Universiti Teknologi Malaysia 4 Malaysia
number of articles from 1997 to 2006, acted as a driving force for the LC field. As shown in
Figure 4(a), LC (not only represents the keyword “lean construction”) had particularly
strong relationships with project management, P&S, followed by construction management,
reliability and resource management from 1997 to 2006.
(a) (b) A review of
Density
Density
LC global lean
construction
Well developed and Cost and Cost
Motor topics
isolated topics management
4 1 Centrality
Sustainability Centrality
3 2
Emerging or Basic and transversal Quality control
declining topics topics and management
(c) (d)
Density
Density
P&S
LC
LC BIM
Prefabrication
PE
Centrality Centrality
P&S
Workflow
Lean
Supply chain
principles
management
Value and
Value stream
management Figure 3.
Strategic diagrams
Notes: (a) Strategic diagram; (b) Period 1 (1997–2006); (c) Period 2 (2007–2011); for Periods 1–3
(d) Period 3 (2012–2016)
3.2.2 Period 2. According to Figure 3(c), Period 2 includes five topics. During this period,
P&S became a motor topic with the highest density and higher centrality. As shown in
Figure 4(b), P&S has strong relationships with process control, project performance and
reliability. Moreover, the most frequently cited articles from 2007 to 2011 were those
pertaining to P&S (seen in Table III). Workflow is a basic topic as it locates in Quadrant 2.
PE is an internally well-structured topic but should be considered peripheral in the whole LC
research field, because inheriting theories and methods from PE is an important way to
develop LC, but not the only way.
3.2.3 Period 3. As shown in Figure 3(d), Period 3 covers six topics. During this period,
prefabrication emerged as the motor topic, which acted to group the studies on
sustainability, PE, workflow and change management. BIM is identified as a well-developed
and isolated topic during this period. Table III also clearly shows that Value and VSM was
the most highly cited topic during Period 3, followed by prefabrication and BIM.
3.2.4 Topic evolution. Research studies in the field of LC have evolved continuously and
smoothly. As shown in Figure 5, the number of articles and the number of keywords in each
period increased on a continuous basis. A few old words were discarded, and more new
words were added during each period. Figure 5 also shows that not even one topic has
disappeared over the past 20 years. Almost all the topics between two consecutive periods
share the main keywords (as the solid lines indicate) except the PE to which only a dotted
line connects from Period 1. All topics are continued even though a dotted line in Figure 5
means that the topics share keywords that are not the main one. More specific or new
ECAM No. of Average
Period Topic articles citations H-index H-classics
1 LC 33 33.31 11 Jun and Chua (2005), Dawood and Sriprasert (2006),

Harper and Bernold (2005), Horman and Thomas
(2005), Ireland (2004), Sacks and Harel (2006), Salem
et al. (2006), Shammas-Toma et al. (1998), Sriprasert
and Dawood (2003), Thomas et al. (2003), Alves and
Tsao (2007)
Cost and cost 28 41.7 8 Formoso et al. (2002), Horman and Thomas (2005),
management Thomas et al. (2003), Lapinski et al. (2006), Liker and
Lamb (2002), Naim and Barlow (2003), Pheng and
Chuan (2001)
Sustainability 21 35.17 6 Barriga et al. (2005), Thomas et al. (2003), Lapinski
and Horman (2006), Kojima and Kaplinsky (2004),
Lapinski et al. (2006)

Quality 16 38.8 4 Formoso et al. (2002), Shammas-Toma et al. (1998),
control and Whelton and
management Ballard (2002)
2 LC 96 20.22 16 Sacks et al. (2009, 2010), Koskela et al. (2010), Sacks
and Goldin (2007), Yu et al. (2009), Watkins et al.
(2009), Mao and Zhang (2008), Han et al. (2008),
Tribelsky and Sacks (2010, 2011), Maturana et al.
(2007), Walsh et al. (2007)
P&S 54 26.9 13 Sacks et al. (2010), Rozenfeld et al. (2010), Sacks and
Goldin (2007), Yu et al. (2009), Al-Sudairi (2007),
Gonzalez et al. (2008), Wang et al. (2009), Han et al.
(2008), González et al. (2010)
Production 30 17 5 Yu et al. (2009), Castro-Lacouture et al. (2009), Wang
engineering et al. (2009), González et al. (2011), Lu et al. (2011)
Workflow 69 14.33 12 Rozenfeld et al. (2010), Höök and Stehn (2008), Saurin
et al. (2008), Sacks et al. (2009), Green et al. (2008),
Watkins et al. (2009), Gonzalez et al. (2008), Wang
et al. (2009), Sullivan (2011), Tribelsky and Sacks
(2010), Garrett and Lee (2010)
Supply chain 57 9.88 4 Höök and Stehn (2008), Sanderson and Cox (2008),
management Nahmens and Mullens (2011)
3 LC 121 3.39 8 Zimina et al. (2012), Arashpour and Arashpour
(2015), Nahmens et al. (2012), Brodetskaia et al.
(2013), Alves et al. (2012), Nath et al. (2015), Sage
et al. (2012)
Prefabrication 84 6.2 9 Han et al. (2012), Saurin et al. (2013), Arashpour and
Arashpour (2015), Wu et al. (2013), Yu et al. (2013),
Nahmens et al. (2012), Forno et al. (2014), Nath et al.
(2015)
BIM 56 4.54 5 Han et al. (2012), Nath et al. (2015), Bryde and
Schulmeister (2012), Zhang et al. (2015), Gurevich
and Sacks (2014)
P&S 60 2.96 6 Wu et al. (2013), Zhang et al. (2015), Arashpour and
Arashpour (2015), Arroyo et al. (2015), Gao and Low
(2014)
Lean 88 3.58 6 Han et al. (2012), Wu et al. (2013), Nahmens et al.
principles (2012), Alves et al. (2012), El. Reifi and Emmitt (2013),
Table III. Bryde and Schulmeister (2012)
The high index Value and 52 7.67 4 Zimina et al. (2012), Yu et al. (2013)
articles of each value stream
topic for Periods 1–3 management
(a) A review of
Resource
management
Reliability Productivity Just-in-time Process control global lean
construction
Cost and Cost
LC management
Lean production Sustainability
Project Construction Supply chain
management management management
Building
P&S Production Workflow
material
(b)
Project Reliability Resource Site Lean
Production Inventories Delivery
performance management management principles
P&S PE SCM Workflow

Quality
Construction
control and
Value and management
Process Lean Industrial Corporate System
Value stream Prefabrication
control production management strategy management
management
(c)
Change Information
Sustainability Visualization Agile Reliability Production
management management
Prefabrication Lean Value and Value

BIM
principles stream management
PE Workflow
Lean Supply chain

Productivity Knowledge Waste Site Cost and Cost Figure 4.
production management management management
Thematic networks
for Periods 1–3
Notes: (a) Period 1 (1997–2006); (b) Period 2 (2007–2011); (c) Period 3 (2012–2016)
research themes have branched out from the various LC-related topics, especially in the last
five years.
Through science mapping, the following conclusions can be drawn from Figures 3–5:
(1) Since the interactions between BIM and LC were first identified by Sacks and
Koskela (2010), more and more studies have been conducted. Therefore, BIM has
become a well-developed topic. However, as BIM is in Quadrant 4, it indicates that
BIM is still an isolated topic in recent years. Figure 4(c) shows that “visualization”
and “information management” were the most occurring keywords associated with
BIM. BIM has a lower centrality than other topics in Period 3. Because BIM is a new
topic for researchers in LC field, the studies combined BIM and other topics in LC
field were fewer than others.
(2) Prefabrication developed into a motor topic during Period 3. In Period 2,
prefabrication was in the SCM group. The study of prefabrication was closely
related to sustainability from 2012 to 2016 (as shown in Figure 3(c)). The
well-developed topic during Period 2 was PE, which was moved into the study of
prefabrication in Period 3. Note that PE provides new methods for the study
of prefabrication.
(3) P&S were identified as a motor topic in both Period 2 and Period 3. P&S has strong
relationships with process control, reliability in Period 2 and last planner system
(LPS), process control in Period 3. This result indicates the importance of control and
reliability in P&S. Moreover, P&S can be seen as a knowledge base of LC because
ECAM 3 13 1 6
63 60 (0.95) 73 72 (0.99) 78
Period 1 Period 2 Period 3
Period 1 Period 2 Period 3
LC LC LC
Cost and Cost

management P&S
Prefabrication
Sustainability Workflow
P&S
Quality control PE
and management
Legend SCM Lean
Conceptual nexus
principles
Non conceptual nexus
Thickness of line proportional to
inclusion index BIM
The number of The number
discarded words of new words
Figure 5. The The number of shared The Value and Value
Conceptual evolution number of keywords (inclusion index) number of
stream management
keywords keywords
map between periods Period A Period B
P&S has been identified in the thematic network and strategic diagram in all the
three periods.
(4) SCM has emerged as an essential topic in all the three periods. From 1997 to 2006,
SCM was closely related to cost (as shown in Figure 4(b)) when cost was a motor
topic (as shown in Figure 3(b)). In Period 2, however, SCM moved from the first
quadrant to the third quadrant, becoming an emerging topic. As shown in Figure 5,
in the last five years, the field of SCM has spread out to new sub-areas or played
significant roles in other sub-areas, such as prefabrication BIM.
3.3 Author collaboration network

The co-authorship network of 729 authors was compiled based on the co-occurrence frequency
of the authors. A total of 1,057 unique links (pairs of co-authors) with 1,125 collaborations were
extracted from the collected articles. The co-authorship network is very sparse, as the density
of this network is 0.004 and the connectedness of this network is only 0.036. As visualized in
Figure 6(a), different colors represent the different components that cannot reach each other.
The co-author network is fragmented into 176 components (clusters) of different sizes.
Note that the size of a cluster indicates the number of authors in that cluster. The size of the
largest component (the giant component shown in Figure 6(a) is 130). This component is
far bigger than the second largest one, which is just 25. The clustering coefficient of a
co-authorship network represents the probability that two of an author’s collaborators have
themselves collaborated (Abbasi et al., 2011; Zhai et al., 2014). Although the clustering
coefficient (0.936) is high, the network is decentralized, as revealed by the small degree
centrality (4.84 percent) and betweenness centrality (2.16 percent).
(a) A review of
global lean
construction
Giant component
(b)
Third largest component
The top collaborative authors
Horman, M.J.
The core authors
Other authors
González, V.
Maturana, S.
Formoso, C.T. Second largest component

Alarcón, L.F.
Saurin, T.A.
Seymour, D.
Giant component
Koskela, L.
Sacks, R. Al-Hussein, M.
Howell, G.A. Han, S.H.
Bae, J. Ballard, G.
Abourizk, S.
Kim, Y.-W.
Lee, H.W.
Tommelein, I.D.
Björnfot, A. Pasquire, C. Mao, X.
Zhang, X.
Figure 6.
Components
distribution and
the top 3 largest
Notes: (a) Components distribution in the co-authorship network; (b) the top 3 largest components
components
Measures such as degree and betweenness centrality were used to investigate the structural
characteristics of each actor. The nodes in Figure 6(b) that are visualized as black diamonds
represent the top collaborative authors in the field of LC. Each of the top authors has more
than ten collaborators. Ballard, G., from the University of California at Berkeley, has the
most collaborators, followed by Koskela, L., from the University of Salford, with 38 and
24 collaborators, respectively. These two authors are the promoters of the IGLC, where
many important ideas related to LC originated. As shown in Figure 6(b), Howell, G.A. has
been identified as one of the top collaborative authors. This result corresponds to the fact
ECAM that Howell, G.A. is the co-founder of LC institute, another important non-profit corporation
to promote LC.
Even though the giant component can reasonably represent the mainstream research
community because the giant component contains more connected authors, not all of the
most highly collaborative authors (greater than or equal to 10) are in the giant component,
based on the analysis of the co-authorship network. Figure 6(b) indicates that there is one
author in the second and third largest components, respectively.
The core authors are identified based on the idea that the node with the highest
betweenness centrality is on the shortest path between many pairs of nodes. This node is
therefore certain to be in a critical place within the network. The nodes with high
betweenness centrality (represented by black diamonds and black circles in Figure 6(b))
indicate that these authors have effectively played a bridging role in the LC field. Although
some authors such as Kim, Y.-W., Saurin, T.A. and AbouRizk, S.M. are not included among
the top collaborative authors, they possess the potential ability to control the degree of
communication between other authors in the LC field.
The strongest co-author collaborations are identified because authors with stronger links
cooperated more closely than others. Table IV shows the strongest co-author collaborations
(those with three or more collaborations). Several authors who are not included among the
top collaborative authors are identified. Table IV also indicates that the strongest degree of
co-author collaboration is between Tommelein, I.D. and Ballard, G. from the University
of California at Berkeley. Table IV also reveals that only three (25 percent) of the top
co-authorship collaborations are international collaborations.
Furthermore, the international cooperation relationships in the LC field are analyzed by
the SNA method. In the international cooperation network (as shown in Figure 7(a)), nodes
are represented by countries or regions. The links between nodes are represented by the
number of times that two countries appear in the same publication. In Figure 7(a), the node
sizes are weighted by the number of cooperative publications. Line size is weighted by the
sum of the number of times of cooperation between two countries. Figure 7(a) indicates
that the USA plays the most dominant role in this network, followed by the UK, with
24 and 17 cooperative countries, respectively. Chile and New Zealand are the strongest
joint-collaborators, followed by South Korea and the USA, and then the USA and the UK.
China cooperates with five countries or regions in publishing LC-related articles, namely the
USA, UK, Australia, Sweden and Hong Kong. The locations of the institutions in each of
these countries can also be found on Google Maps (Figure 7(b)), using the geocoding tool
from GPSVisualizer.com. The distribution of the international cooperation relationships can
be seen on this map.
Author Country/region Co-author Country/region Sum of collaborations
Ballard, G. USA Tommelein, I.D. USA 8

Alarcón, L.F. Chile González, V. New Zealand 7
Gao, S. Singapore Low, S.P. Singapore 5
Ikuma, L.H. USA Nahmens, I. USA 5
Ballard, G. USA Pasquire, C. UK 4
Rozenfeld, O. Israel Sacks, R. Israel 3
Horman, M.J. USA Thomas, H.R. USA 3
Alarcón, L.F. Chile Maturana, S. Chile 3
Al-Hussein, M. Canada Yu, H. Canada 3
Table IV. Ballard, G. USA Lee, H.W. USA 3
Top strongest Ballard, G. USA Howell, G.A. USA 3
collaborations Khanh, H.D. Vietnam Kim, S.Y. South Korea 3
(a) Hungary
A review of
global lean
Kuwait Israel construction
Switzerland
Denmark United Arab Emirates
Japan
Germany
Austria Sweden
France Turkey United Kingdom Ghana
Norway
Saudi Arabia
China
Estonia Canada Colombia Malaysia
Finland Iran
Australia
United States
South Africa
Egypt
South Korea
Luxembourg Chile
Netherlands Hong Kong
Taiwan Viet Nam

Croatia Mexico Singapore
Brazil Lebanon New Zealand

Ecuador
Spain
India
Portugal
(b)
Figure 7.
International
cooperation network
and regional
distribution in the
Notes: (a) International cooperation network; (b) regional distribution of international map for LC field
cooperation relationships
4. Discussions
This study has used the concept of H-index which is originally defined by Hirsch (2005) to
measure the scientific performance of a researcher through her publications. Martínez et al.
(2014) adapted the definition of H-index to support the analysis of citation classics.
Therefore, this paper followed Martinez’s definition. A topic with a high H-index means that
the research conducted on the subject is of quality and reflects high interest among the
scientific community. This is the case of the LC and prefabrication topics in Period 2 and
Period 3, respectively.
ECAM The circles in strategic diagrams (Figure 3) represent the identified topics. These topics
are not equal to keywords. Each topic means a cluster that contains several connected
keywords. For example, the topic LC represents the cluster including six keywords, namely
LC, resource management, reliability, project management, construction management and
P&S (as shown in Figure 4(a)). Thematic networks in Figure 4 describe the relations
between keywords. The thickness of lines in Figure 4 is proportional to the relation strength
which is measured by the equivalence index as mentioned above. Taking the P&S in
Figure 4(b) for an example, reliability and process control have the strongest relation
strength with P&S, followed by lean production and project performance.
This paper concentrates more on investigating the contribution to the body of knowledge
in LC field beyond the IGLC proceedings (or IGLC community). This paper extends previous
literature reviews by hypothesizing that articles published in peer-reviewed journals are
more likely to spread and shared by other researchers. Peer review constitutes a form of
self-regulation by qualified members of a profession in a relevant field. The articles published

in peer-reviewed journals have higher quality in both content and style than these published
in proceedings because of the strict publishing process. As for the articles in IGLC
proceedings, the main faults show in keywords and references. As presented in previous
studies (Alves and Tsao, 2007; Etges et al., 2012), 7.8 percent of IGLC articles have no
keywords. While the collected articles in this paper contain at least one keyword. According to
the result of Pasquire and Connor (2011), the majority (about 86.6 percent) of the IGLC articles
refer more to books, conference articles, reports and trade magazines, which are suggested to
be less rigorous source data. Therefore, the IGLC articles are not included in this paper. Alves
and Tsao (2007) identified LC research categories based on the keywords in IGLC proceedings
from 2000 to 2006. This paper makes a contrast with results of this paper.
The strategic diagrams show that the topic “lean construction” tops in all the three
periods. This term is frequently selected as a keyword because it signifies that the article
refers to research or implementation of LC theory, principles, and techniques. This result is
the same as Alves and Tsao have analyzed. As for the identified topics or research areas of
LC, some identified topics are similar such as the studies of cost and quality except
sustainability. The study conducted by Alves and Tsao presented that in IGLC conferences
from 2000 to 2006, sustainability has not been very popular among researchers and
practitioners because few keywords (such as sustainability, green building and sustainable
development) appeared in this period. While this paper identified sustainability as one of the
topics in Period 1. These articles that contain keywords such as sustainability are more than
that analyzed by Alves and Tsao. These articles were also checked to verify that they are in
the same period from 2000 to 2006. This difference indicates that there are other
contributors and topics beyond the IGLC community. Moreover, previous review articles are
static analyses in a specific period while this paper reveals the dynamic development
process of topics in LC filed.
The evolution of the theoretical framework of LC can also be discussed systematically.
Glenn Ballard and Koskela, both initiator and core scholar of LC, began their collaboration
with Glenn Ballard at a lecture at the UC Berkeley. Subsequently, LC was written into a
research report and first presented as an independent academic concept at the first IGLC
conference (Koskela, 1992). However, in the early development of LC, the theoretical core
was Transfer-Flow-Value theory, which regards the construction process as a production
process, while there is a lack of close connection between the three parts (Bertelsen and
Koskela, 2002). TFV is based on different ontology, T is based on traditional entity
theory, and F and V are based on process theory. During this time, mainly before 2007, the
topic of lean research focused on basic concepts in the theoretical system, such as
productivity, lean production, cost management and sustainability, which can be seen in
Figures 3(b) and 4(a). After 2007, Koskela rethought TFV theory and renamed it as
Work-Flow-Value theory. He thought that “Work” is more focused on the integration of A review of
resources, embodying the actual and complex internal realization of process theory global lean
(Koskela and Rooke, 2007). Bertelsen summarized the process model in the development of construction
LC theory and revised the process model based on key flows proposed by him in the
previous period. He believed that not only was a process decisive in the construction
process but also proposed a process model that abstracted the process types (Bertelsen
et al., 2007). Thus, the theoretical system of LC was established on the philosophy of
process theory and the focus of research started to concentrated on process dimensions
(Rooke et al., 2007). This explains why most of the research after 2007 is related to the
process, such as SCM, workflow and P&S, which are shown in Figures 3(c) and 4(b). In
addition to TFV and process model, other important concepts in the process of lean
development are LPS and lean project delivery system (LPDS). LPS proposed by Ballard
was initially used as a tool for process management. However, with the continuous
expansion of LPS, the concept of LPDS as a project delivery has gradually improved
(Ballard, 2008). Since 2011, industrialized construction has once again become a feature in
many countries and regions. Therefore, industrialized construction has become a research
hotspot in many countries and regions, with the development of IT such as BIM (Li et al.,
2018). In this context, some new elements such as prefabrication and building information
model become more apparent in LC, which is also demonstrated in Figures 3(d) and 4(c). It
should be noted that prefabrication and BIM are topics closely related to lean under the
new development trend, but they are not themselves within the LC concept system.
Another important point is value management, which was born almost accompanied by
LC. The trend that value management has become the focus of research may be related to
the more obvious customer-oriented role in the supply chain of industrial construction.
However, this statement still needs confirmation from a series of studies. We can analyze
that the conceptual system of LC is constantly evolving, and the process of evolution is
related to the scholars’ thinking of LC philosophical foundation, the development of the
construction industry and the development of IT.
Finally, some limitations to this study should be pointed out. The main limitations are
caused by that the IGLC proceedings are not included in this study. A highly influential
author named Lichtig, W. is not identified in this paper because his contributions of articles
were mainly in the IGLC proceedings rather in peer-reviewed journals. As a construction
lawyer, Lichtig, W. developed the first Integrated Form of Agreement for the owner to
support lean project delivery. Another limitation is related to the choice of terms used to
retrieve related articles to describe the LC field, since we only used the term “lean
construction” and fuzzy retrieval method to search in both the Scopus database and
journals. As a result, these articles that do not contain “lean construction” in the title/
keywords/abstract were excluded.
5. Conclusions
This study provides a new scientific analysis and visualization to explore LC topics,
research trends and the collaboration status of scholars in the LC field based on 370 articles
published in peer-reviewed journals between 1997 and 2016.
This paper gives a general review of the above-mentioned literature, including the
number of LC-related articles published in each year, as well as the major journals and main
contributors to the field of LC.
Science mapping was performed to identify the research topics, evolution and the
relationships between these topics. Also, the most influential LC-related articles in each topic
were identified based on the concept of H-classics. Moreover, SNA was used to explore the
collaboration status of authors and to identify the core authors in the LC field. The main
findings of this paper are explained as follows.
ECAM The study period was divided into three periods of time on the basis of two criteria: the
development of LC, and a sufficient volume of articles for science mapping analysis. The
three periods were 1997–2006, 2007–2011 and 2012–2016. Through the science mapping
analysis, the diversity of topics in the LC field has been verified. Topics in the LC field are
consistently and continuously changing, with the adding of new keywords and the
development of more specific topics over time. The knowledge base and research trend of
LC research were identified. The topics that could form the knowledge base of the LC
research field in the future are related to two thematic areas: SCM and P&S. SCM focuses on
developing a system where supplier and client work together in coordination to deliver
materials, works, equipment and labor and other resources. P&S emphasizes the reliable
process of determining appropriate strategies for the achievement of predefined objectives
by setting performance standards. With regard to research trends, prefabrication is the new
hot topic, while BIM is a well-developed and isolated topic in the last five years.
Prefabrication is a way to change empirical construction management into lean production

by applying theories and methods such as PE. BIM is a 3D model-based process that equips
professionals in AEC with the insight and tools to plan, design, construct and manage
projects more efficiently.
In terms of contributions to journal articles and cumulative citations in the LC field,
Ballard, G. and Sacks, R. have been the most productive authors. Regarding the top
collaborative efforts in the co-authorship network, considerable attention should be paid to
Ballard, G., Koskela, L. and other authors in Figure 6(b) represented with black diamond
such as Tommelein, I.D. and Howell, G.A., for their significant influences in the development
of LC. Other authors (such as Kim, Y.-W. and Saurin, T.A.) have been identified as the core
authors because they present high betweenness centralities. The collaboration network of
the LC field is sparse. Therefore, to optimize the collaboration network it is important to
strengthen the connections between peripheral authors and mainstream authors in the giant
component and to strengthen and tighten the existing collaborations. As for global
collaborations, LC research has been widely pursued throughout the world. The USA and
the UK play the most dominant role in the international collaboration network.
This paper provides insights (such as major journals, institutions, key scholars, the
evolution of topics, highly indexed articles and the new LC trends in the last five years) for
researchers in the LC field. The specific results of this paper are limited to articles published
in peer-reviewed journals, but can hopefully contribute to further research by providing new
gaps and research opportunities for researchers. The presented thematic networks can
contribute to learning the existing relationship between two topics in LC field as well as to
identify new research opportunities. The research collaboration inspires knowledge
acquisition and dissemination. Therefore, the presented co-authorship network and authors
can contribute to understand mainstream research community of the LC field and to develop
potential collaboration chances. The results of this paper will inspire subsequent
researchers to follow these studies and our findings of core scholars and core articles, which
will enable future researchers to contribute even more LC-related studies. For example, this
paper summarizes that BIM only has the strongest relationships with visualization and
information management. This result indicates that more studies need to be conducted in
the future, to promote the integration of BIM and lean practices in the construction phase, as
well as to explore the value of BIM in the reduction or elimination of waste and lean project
delivery. From the aspect of LC, the advantages of prefabrication are that prefabrication can
simplify construction activities and bring the benefit of sustainable development to the
construction site. However, prefabrication will also increase the complexity and challenges
posed to construction managers. These challenges include more restricted planning and
control between off-site and on-site activities, as well as more precise tolerances. Therefore,
to explore interactions between BIM and LC beyond visualization and the value of
prefabrication to LC beyond sustainability are new research opportunities. The result of the A review of
SNA reveals that more collaboration between authors is needed to promote the development global lean
of LC beyond the range of IGLC community. Future researchers can explore the chances of construction
cooperation, based on this co-authorship network and joint research interests. The
continuously changing topics in the LC field also demonstrate that the lean concept system
has evolved over time to a certain extent, which suggests that our continued exploration of
the concept of LC is still necessary.
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of interest: The authors declare no conflicts of interest. This study was
supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71371041 and 71561009
and 71310165), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2016M590605 and 2017T100477),
Postdoctoral Science Foundation of Jiangxi Province (2016KY27), Social Science Planning
Foundation of Jiangxi Province (16GL32), and Natural Science Foundation of Jiangxi

Province (S2017QNJJB0493).
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Zanotti, N.L., Maranhão, F.L. and Aly, V.L.C. (2017), “Bottom-up strategy for lean construction on site
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Corresponding author
Guangdong Wu can be contacted at: gd198410@163.com
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A Review of Global Lean Construction During The Past Two Decades Analysis and Visualization

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decades: analysis and visualization

Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China, and

Chongqing University, Chongqing, China

LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA, “SOCI”) OR LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA, “COMP”) OR LIMIT-TO

Data retrieval in the Scopus database

Step 1 TITLE-ABS-KEY Limited the subject area,

Thorough search into

Step 3 Identify the first journal

Preprocess the data

Standardize the Standardize the names of

such as “theory of constraint,” “theory of constraints,” “total constraint

2.2 Science mapping analysis

2.3 Social network analysis (SNA)

3. Results and analysis

3.2 Science mapping of lean construction

600 Horman, M.J.

400 Howell, G.A. Alarcón, L.F.

1 Lean Construction Journal 56

14 Journal of Civil Engineering and Management 5

Institution/university No. of articles Country/region

1 LC 33 33.31 11 Jun and Chua (2005), Dawood and Sriprasert (2006),

Lapinski et al. (2006)

P&S PE SCM Workflow

Prefabrication Lean Value and Value

Lean Supply chain

Period 1 Period 2 Period 3

Cost and Cost

3.3 Author collaboration network

Formoso, C.T. Second largest component

Author Country/region Co-author Country/region Sum of collaborations

Ballard, G. USA Tommelein, I.D. USA 8

Taiwan Viet Nam

Brazil Lebanon New Zealand

self-regulation by qualified members of a profession in a relevant field. The articles published

Prefabrication is a way to change empirical construction management into lean production

Foundation of Jiangxi Province (16GL32), and Natural Science Foundation of Jiangxi

Engineering, Vol. 23 No. 2, pp. 67-74.

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