Lean construction Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 5750 words

Lean construction - Essay Example In fact, lean construction is set to be considered as the benchmark for other industries as it is for manufacturing currently. Effective tools and strategies can be implemented in the construction industry to implement lean and reduce waste to achieve operations efficiency through improved quality and productivity. Table of Contents Chapter One: Introduction Background to study Aims and objectives Research methodology Summary Chapter Two: Literature review Production and Operations Management Project life-cycle Productivity challenges Lean production system Lean principles The concept of waste The Toyota way Lean construction Lean and strategy Lean implementation Chapter Three: Conclusions and recommendations References Chapter One: Introduction This chapter introduces the concept of lean management in production and discusses its evolution, importance, relevance in construction, aims and objectives of the study, the research methodology applied and the overall organization of the re search study. Background to study Lean concept is much appreciated, tested and practiced in industries like manufacturing, government, health care and other institutions. Lean in construction has been found to save costs and customers too increasingly prefer lean management of construction for cost savings. As there is much waste that is generated in the construction industry, implementing lean in construction industry can yield cost savings and reduce lead times for the benefit of all. It also found that present construction industry creates value at the rate of 10 percent while generating waste at the rate of 57 percent while in the manufacturing sector that implements lean, the reverse is true as it creates a value add of 62 percent and a waste of 26 percent (Sowards, 2012). Lean thinking was first applied to car manufacturing service but later evolved to be applied to other manufacturing sectors and hence been implemented in other industries as well. Lean implementation challeng es traditional business processes to improve performance to give a competitive advantage to the business. The concept of lean thinking or management is defined as â€Å"the process of continuously eliminating waste in all processes and systems† and was primarily related to production. Henry Ford first introduced this concept in his company in the manufacturing segment and later adopted it into other segments like accounting and non0manufacturign operations. The Japanese saw lean as a method to superior manufacturing through quality improvement and later started adopting it in other areas of the business processes, with the efforts and success of Toyota drawing attention worldwide (Bottirov, 2011). As other sectors including government and healthcare started implementing lean methods throughout the entire spectrum of business processes, construction industry too started considering the advantages of lean management (Bottirov, 2011). As the concept of lean management has emerge d from the production line, much of the practices, tools and techniques are readily available for implementation in manufacturing but construction being a different area than manufacturing, all of the principles and practices of lean production management do not fit into the construction industry, although there are many similarities in the processes of the two industry