What is Lean Construction?

Owner
Architect/Engineer General

Vendors Subcontractors

Lean construction is a set principles and tools to facilitate planning and control, maximize value
and minimize waste throughout the construction process.
The History of LEAN
Henry Ford-
Father of Mass Production

Empire State Building

• 14.5 Months
• Standardization • “Flow “ Production • Predictable Flow Used
• Best Practice • C.A.N.D.O (Clearing Up, • Integrated Team
• Deployment Arranging, Neatness, Discipline, • Location Based Schedule
Ongoing improvement) • Analytics

LEAN Journey
1900 1905 1910 1915 1920 1925 1930 1935 1940 1945
The History of LEAN
U.S. Auto Industry Awoken To
“LEAN Manufacturing”

Taiichi Ohno —
Father of the Toyota
Production System (TPS)

•Just-In-Time (JIT)
•Continuous Improvement
•Respect for People Eliyahu Goldratt - Kaoru Ishikawa - Joseph Juran - Edwards Deming

•7 Types of Waste Total Quality Management (TQM)

Theory of Constraints (TOC)
•5S Program

1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995
1990
The History of LEAN
Integrated Project Delivery (IPD)

Lean Construction Institute

Last Planner System TM
Construction Teams Start to use with Sutter’s 5 Big Ideas
great success.

Glenn Greg
Ballard & Howell
AGC Lean
Construction Forum
Created

1997 2000 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2008 2010 2011
Why LEAN? – The “way we have always done it” is not working
LEAN Principles and Tools
•Waste- 8 Types
•5S
•Visual Work Place
•Reliable Promises
•Electronic Documents
What is Waste?

8. Under-utilized Talent
Waste in Construction
Current Manufacturing Current Construction
5S

• Everything On
Wheels
• Nothing Hits the
Ground
• Subcontractor
Laydown Areas
• Continuous Cleaning
• Sustaining the Plan
 Visual Work Place
Owner Signage -
Include Project Goals or
Condition of Satisfaction
(CoS)
• Clear Signage -
Boards and Lists- Get the files Restroom, Lunch, &
out of the computer and into
the open Staging Area
• Owner Signage -
Include Project Goals
or Condition of
Satisfaction (CoS)
• Boards and Lists
• Color Coding Site
 Visual Work Place
Subcontractor
laydown areas and S5
organization
Set expectation early and
often. Get the information in
places the field staff have
access to it.

Color Coding of Floor-

Visual work is used in pull Establish flow and
planning to talk about direction. Logistic plan
batch sizing. should be posted on
project.
Reliable Promises- Pull Planning
Pull Planning provides
project alignment and
schedule buy in with
subcontractors. Pull
Planning is just a different
way of running a
foreman’s meeting

Daily Forman
Huddles- Tracking
Percent Promise Breakout Meeting-
Complete (PPC) Addressing Complex
Issues in Smaller Groups
 Reliable Promises- Constraint Log

The Theory of Constraints

(TOC) is a management
paradigm that views any
manageable system as being
limited in achieving more of
its goals by a very small
number of constraints. There
is always at least one
constraint, and TOC uses a
Constraint Log – a list of constraints with identification of an individual promising to focusing process to identify
resolve the item by an agreed date. Typically developed during a review of the Six the constraint and restructure
Week Look Ahead Plan when it is discovered that activities are not constraint free. the rest of the organization
around it.
Reliable Promises- Plan, Do, Check Act & A3
Electronic Documents
Everything Lives
in the Cloud

Electronic Documents
provide the most current
information to entire
project team and reduce
waste and rework.
• E-Doc’s
• Tablets - Including
Subcontractor Foremen
Electronic Documents- BIM
 Model as much as possible- The more the better
 Maximize learning curve prior to work in field
 Minimize variation created by errors
“It is not necessary to change.
Survival is not mandatory”
W. Edwards Deming