Improving productivity for

concreting work (specifically,

shuttering and reinforcement
activities
Jibin John
PGET – Industrial Engineer , Strategic HR
Tata Power , Mumbai
Aim :
To improve productivity of concreting activities of Tata
Project

Objectives :
a) Improvement in productivity and utilization.

b) Timely completion in line with plan and estimated

cost
Approach :
• To improve productivity of activities ( shuttering and reinforcement) , where
we are assuming number of crews as constant and keeping completion time
also same.
• Output for these activities :
1. Shuttering activities :-
Output  Sq. mm of shuttering
Input  no. of crew, days required to complete whole activity, tools and
equipments .
• Total Sq. mm ( shuttering ) and Kgs ( reinforcement ) has to be increased to
improve the output where keeping input as constant.
• Thus focus is to improve the process and sub-processes so as to increase
efficiency.
Improving productivity of process :
Create Value stream mapping for shuttering and reinforcement process.
• Map the current process.
• Identify the wastes and non adding sub- activities involved considering the eight
types of wastes;
a ) Transportation waste : It involves the unnecessary movement of materials or
equipment. This can involve movement from one jobsite to another, or from a
yard to a material laydown area and then again to the actual work area.

b) Inventory waste : occurs when overproduction results in excess material. This

includes material being stored on-site or at the fabrication yard, work in progress,
and unused tools or parts.

c) Motion waste is a result of extra steps taken by people to accomplish their

work. This includes time spent looking for a tool or file, as well as walking extra
yards due to a poorly designed work area.
d) Waiting : This waste happens when crews are left waiting for the delivery of
material or equipment, or for the completion of a preceding activity.

e) Overproduction : It is the process of fabricating material too soon or ordering extra

material because of poor quality, rather than producing and delivering the right
amount of material at the time it is needed.

f) Over-processing : This waste refers to unnecessary steps taken in the project value
chain, such as transforming or double-handling material.

g) Defects : Defects are incorrect work that needs to be repaired, replaced, or redone.
In lean construction, this includes damaged material, rework, or punch list items.

h) Skills and under-utilized talent : This waste of lean involves failing to make use of
people’s skills, creativity, or knowledge on a project.
• With these, areas required to be improved can be identified and
alternative solutions or desired action is to be decided to deal with these
non-adding activities.
• After developing the action plan, develop a future map of the shuttering
and reinforcement process and determine now the expected workload
that is for shuttering expected Sq-mm for per crew per day and for
reinforcement expected total Kgs for per crew per day.
• If this matches or is close enough to the bench productivity metrics then
we can move forward in implementing the action plan orelse complete
re-structuring of the process and analyzing the case studies related to the
benchmarked productivity is to be verified.
THANK YOU