LEAN
LEAN CONSTRUCTION PROCEDURES (LCP®)
Need for LEAN in Construction
Construction Industry - LEAN renewal
The crisis for change seen for FORD and the Japanese car industry in LEAN History was echoed by Sir John Egan in his report on the construction industry, Rethinking Construction (1998). It was to advise the Deputy Prime Minister from the clients' perspective on the opportunities to improve the efficiency and quality of delivery of UK construction, to reinforce the impetus for change and to make the industry more responsive to customer needs. It was commissioned by the Deputy Prime Minister to assess the efficiency of the UK construction industry.
The most critical constraint on improvement lay in spreading LEAN production to smaller second tier suppliers. They investigated the emerging business philosophy of "lean thinking" which had been developed first in the car industry and is now spreading through the best manufacturers and into retailing and other industries. Lean thinking presents a powerful and coherent synthesis of the most effective techniques for eliminating waste and delivering significant sustained improvements in efficiency and quality. Lean Production is the generic version of the Toyota Production System, recognised as the most efficient production system in the world today. Lean Thinking describes the core principles underlying this system that can also be applied to every other business activity - from designing new products and working with suppliers to processing orders from customers. The starting point is to recognise that only a small fraction of the total time and effort in any organisation actually adds value for the end customer. By clearly defining value for a specific product or service from the end customer's perspective all the non value activities, often as much as 95% of the total, can be targeted for removal step by step.
Looms, Supermarkets, Cars and Construction
World-wide benchmarking studies of car and component manufacturing in the early 1990s revealed a two to one gap in performance and a 100 to one gap in quality between Japanese and Western car manufacturers. The opening of the Nissan, Toyota and Honda plants in the UK showed that this level of performance could also be achieved in plants outside Japan. Western car manufacturers then began crash programmes to implement "lean production" systems in order to close the gap. To fulfil their aim of 80% local content within a few years, the Japanese carmakers also began to work closely with local component suppliers to help them implement lean production.
Construction Industry - LEAN renewal
The Egan Task Force were "impressed by the dramatic success being achieved by leading companies that are implementing the principles of "lean thinking" and believed that "the concept holds much promise for construction".
Since Sir John Egan's Task Force published its report Rethinking Construction in 1998, there has been some progress, but nowhere near enough. Few of the Egan targets has been met in full, while most have fallen considerably short. Where improvement has been achieved, too often the commitment to Egan's principles has been skin-deep.
1. poor management evident in a lack of true leadership
2. a risk-averse culture stifling innovation
3. a lack of integration in the supply chain
4. poor project flow caused by financial and decision-making delays
5. an approach to procurement that was not oriented to achieving value for money
6. misinterpretations of the need for public accountability, such as a fear of longer-term relationships or partnering with suppliers.
Six main areas, which demonstrated a performance gap between government and best practice clients. Government Construction Clients Panel (GCCP) 1998 - In some sectors, such as housing, construction simply does not matter, because there is such limited understanding of how value can be created through the construction process.
EGAN Gives the industry 4 out of 10 for skin deep approach to tackling inefficiency.
The case for LEAN renewal
Construction complexity stems from several sources. The very nature of the construction activity which creates a unique product using an the associated undocumented production process is a challenge. In addition, confusion from the temporary production system where resources are shared between projects by subcontractors working on several projects at the same time add to the complexity. This is compounded by ad-hoc organisation not least the clients organisation which must be recognised as a complex social system. Applying Lean Thinking that represents a path of sustained performance improvement and not a one-off programme is for these reasons not an easy conversion from the production environment.