Construction executives are always looking for ways to cut costs, increase efficiency and improve processes and procedures for executing all forms of work. One way to accomplish all of those things is lean construction. Although it takes time, finances and effort to convert a company to lean, the benefits are substantial and worth the long-term investment.
What is Lean Construction?
Lean construction aims to identify waste, increase efficiency and improve process performance. Lean companies develop and implement a concept known as Value Stream Mapping – a tool that details every step of a project and every process in a company, its corresponding procedure and the person responsible for executing it.
The concept was pioneered by Edward Demming. After World War II, he tried to get American manufacturers to adopt his processes, but he was rebuffed. He went to Japan in 1950 and was welcomed by a sewing machine company named Toyota. The new system brought them great success. Accordingly, this American system became known as the Toyota Production System.
Demming boiled his principles down to 14 directives:
- Create constancy of purpose for improvement of product and service with the aim to become competitive, to stay in business and to keep providing jobs.
- Adopt the new philosophy. In this new economic age, Western management must awaken to the challenge, learn their responsibilities and take on leadership for change.
- Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for inspection on a mass basis by building quality into the product in the first place.
- End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price alone. Instead, minimize total cost. Move toward a single supplier for any one item on a long-term relationship of loyalty and trust.
- Improve constantly and forever every process for planning, production and service. Improve quality and productivity, and thus, constantly decrease costs.
- Institute training on the job. This should be a part of everybody’s everyday activities.
- Adopt and institute leadership. The aim of supervision should be to help people and machines and gadgets to do a better job. Supervision of management is in need of overhaul as well as supervision of production workers.
- Drive out fear so that everyone may work effectively for the company because they want it to succeed.
- Break down barriers between staff areas or departments. People in research, design, sales and production must work as a team to foresee problems of production and in use that may be encountered with the product or service.
- Eliminate slogans, exhortations and targets for the workforce asking for zero defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the work force.
- Eliminate numerical quotas for the workforce and numerical goals for management.
- Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the factory floor. Substitute leadership.
- Eliminate the obsolete concept of “management by objective.” Eliminate management by numbers, numerical goals. Substitute leadership.
12. Remove barriers that rob people of pride of workmanship – eliminate the annual rating or merit system.
- Remove barriers that rob the hourly worker of their right to pride of workmanship. The responsibility of supervisors must be changed from sheer numbers to quality.
- Remove barriers that rob people in management and in engineering of their right to pride of workmanship. This means abolishing the annual merit rating and management by objectives.
13. Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement for everyone. Let them participate to choose the areas of development.
14. Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is everybody’s job.
Benefits of Lean Construction
There are many benefits to companies who implement lean construction practices. Some of the most important benefits are increased productivity and reduced waste. Construction productivity peaked in 1968 and has declined almost every year since—contrary to nearly every other industry in the United States—and is estimated to be only 40 to 60 percent of potential labor efficiency. At least 10 percent of materials are also wasted, leading to huge losses of money and a negative environmental impact.
The solutions that flow from a company’s Value Stream Map (VSM) will not only reduce costs and increase efficiency across the board, but will help improve safety, increase quality and save entire teams time and effort. Another big benefit for lean construction companies is being able to participate in integrated project delivery construction projects that require companies to follow lean practices.
How One Company is Converting to Lean Construction
Ennis Electric started developing its VSM last year, which details every process in a company so that every step follows a set process and procedure – down to where each tool is located. Making the conversion to a lean construction company required input from all Ennis Electric team members. When discussing what changes to make, leadership consulted teams across all job positions to determine where the company could improve and how to implement improvements. The company initially created a core lean team with participants from different sectors of the company so multiple perspectives were considered in identifying problems and crafting solutions. The core lean team met four full days a month to detail the VSM for every process in the company— identifying along the way key areas in need of improvement. Now smaller teams meet monthly to craft solutions to the problems identified during the VSM process.
Lean is the future of the construction industry. Companies that take the time to develop and implement these improved processes and procedures will have a leg up on competitors by working more efficiently, increasing profits, improving safety and having a chance to bid on integrated project delivery projects – to name a few.
